XXXVlll 



Obituary. 



It is with the utmost regret that I commence this report with 

 the record of the decease of several of our most talented Ento- • 

 mologists. 



In Thomas Vernon Wollaston, Entomologists have lost one 

 of the most assiduous as well as the most talented of their body. 

 Elaborately minute in the descriptions of the species of insects 

 which he had collected with so much zeal and studied with so 

 much care, he was yet endowed with broad and well-formed 

 generalisations of the Science which he loved, and which were 

 developed not only in ' Variation of Species,' published in 1856, 

 but in the ' Introductions ' to all his subsequent pubhcations on 

 the insects of the Atlantic Islands, a study which he has made his 

 own. Born on the 19th March, 1 821, he became a student of Jesus 

 College, Cambridge, and was afterwards compelled, for a long 

 portion of his life, to pass much of his time in a warmer climate, 

 on account of pulmonary weakness ; and selecting Madeira as his 

 temporary residence, he collected the insects and shells of this 

 island, and subsequently those of the Canaries, the Cape Verde 

 Archipelago, and more recently the Island of St. Helena, with 

 the greatest energy, notwithstanding his generally debilitated 

 state. His 'Insecta Maderensia,' 1854; 'Catalogue of the 

 Coleoptera of Madeira,' 1857 ; ' Catalogue of the Coleoptera of 

 the Canaries,' 1864 ; ' Coleoptera Atlantidum, 1865 ; ' Coleoptera 

 Hesperidum,' 1867 ; and ' Coleoptera Sanctse Helense,' just pub- 

 lished, form a series of works unequalled in the literature of the 

 Order. In Hagen's ' Bibliotlieca Entomologica' there is a list of 

 thirty-four separately published menoirs and notes, from 1847 to 

 1861. The titles of ten more, published in 1861 — 3, are given 

 in the Royal Society's Catalogue of Papers, since which time 

 numerous additional memoirs have appeared from his pen. The 

 type-specimens of all his collections were purchased by the 

 British Museum, but the large mass of his specimens, including 

 nearly all his species, were purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Hope, at 

 the price of ^500, and are deposited in the Oxford Museum. 

 His death, on the 4th of January, was awfully sudden, and his 

 memory, both as a man of Science and a Christian gentleman, 

 will be cherished by all who knew him. 



