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and playfulness. Though bigots and pretenders of all kinds might 

 have found reason to give a different account of the results of their 

 personal intercourse with Mr. MacLeay, he was, to his friends 

 and to all really anxious for information, such as above described. 

 At this residence Mr. MacLeay died after a lingering illness on 

 the 26th of January in the present year. 



Mr. MacLeay, after his return from France, where perhaps he 

 acquired his strong taste for zoological pursuits from the example 

 and under the encouragement of such men as Cuvier, G-eoffroy St. 

 Hilaire, and Latreille, and especially, as we may suppose, of the 

 latter,and until his departure for Australia inl839,published nume- 

 rous papers, chiefly relatingto entomological subjects. These papers, 

 up to the year 1839 or 1840, were usually published in the ' Lin- 

 nean Transactions ; ' but upon the establishment of the Zoological 

 Society, in which, in conjunction with the late Mr. Vigors, he was 

 very active, most of his more important communications appear 

 to have been given in the ' Zoological Journal ' or in the ' Trans- 

 actions ' or ' Proceedings ' of the new Society, or in the ' Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History.' But, besides these scattered 

 memoirs, we are indebted to Mr. MacLeay for two works of very 

 considerable importance. The former of these, entitled " Horse 

 Entomologicae, or Essays on Annulose Animals," is contained in 

 two volumes, of which the iirst appeared in 1819, soon after his 

 return from France, and the second in 1821. And it is a curious 

 circumstance that a work which was destined to be exposed to so 

 much criticism should from the first appear to have been doomed 

 to destruction, as if the spirit of conservatism in science were 

 determined to oppose the introduction of new and startling funda- 

 mental views. Nearly the whole impression of the first volume 

 was destroyed by fire on the premises of the publishers, whilst 

 the second edition was as near perishing by the opposite agency 

 of water, an unusual rise of the Thames drowning a large part of 

 it. The work, moreover, having escaped these perils, was subse- 

 quently exposed to the fortunately less destructive agencies of 

 unfriendly critics, and, it may be added, to the still more dangerous 

 support of injudicious friends. 



• It would be out of place here to enter into an analysis or criti- 

 cism of this work, in which, however, it may be said are contained 

 some of the most important speculations as to the afiinities or re- 

 lations of various groups of animals to each other ever ofiered to 

 the world, and of which it is almost impossible to overrate the 

 suggestive value. Speculative ideas, however, of such a general 



