144 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



OBITUARY. 



F. 0. Morris. — One of the best known of the popular writers on 

 Natural History of the time, the Rev. Francis Orper Morris, the Vicar 

 of Newburnholme, Yorkshire, died at that place on Feb. 10th last, in 

 his eighty-third year. He was born at Cove, near Cork, in Ireland, on 

 March 25th, 1810, but belonged to a well-known Yorkshire family, 

 many of whose members served with distinction in the great wars 

 with France and America, both by land and sea. F. 0. Morris 

 was educated at Bromsgrove School, and afterwards proceeded to 

 Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated with honours in 

 1833, taking a second class in Classics. When at Oxford, he was in 

 the habit of reading three or four authors alternately, by which means 

 he was able to get through a much greater amount of work with far 

 less fatigue than if he had confined himself to one thing at a time ; the 

 most mischievous course that any active-minded man of ordinary 

 capacities can follow. The same habit clung to him through 

 life ; and at one time, in addition to his parochial duties, which he 

 never neglected, he had to find copy every month regularly for five 

 separate works — the ' British Birds,' ' British Butterflies,' * Aphoris- 

 mata Entomologica,' ' Bible Natural History,' and the ' History of the 

 Nests and Eggs of British Birds.' He used to quote with approval 

 Southey's aphorism, " I have not time to do only one thing at once." 

 Mr. Morris selected Pliny's ' Natural History ' as the subject of his 

 voluntary thesis at his final examination in Oxford ; and in 1837 he 

 published some notes on British insects (chiefly Lepidoptera) in a 

 periodical called the ' Naturalist.' In 1834 he was admitted to Holy 

 Orders ; and in 1854 settled down at Newburnholme Rectory for the 

 rest of his life. His works had a large circulation, but as they were 

 always of a popular character, and were necessarily to a large extent 

 compilations, they were frequently underrated by writers of more pre- 

 tensions. His opposition to Darwinism was perhaps unwise, but 

 intelligible enough in a man of his age and surroundings. His writings 

 include books on British ornithology, entomology, and general Natural 

 History, besides sermons, polemics against Darwinism and vivisection, 

 and a work on the ' County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of 

 Great Britain and Ireland.' His entomological writings include his 

 ' British Butterflies,' first published in 1852, and perhaps his most 

 successful work, as the seventh edition was passing through the press 

 at the time of his death ; his ' British Moths ' likewise, with coloured 

 plates of all the species ; his ' Catalogue of British Insects ' (the only 

 general catalogue since those of Curtis and Stephens), and his ' Aphor- 

 ismata Entomologica.' His ' British Butterflies ' formed the basis of 

 a still more popular work — Adam's ' Beautiful Butterflies.' Although 

 it would be absurd to call Mr. Morris the " Gilbert White of the 

 North," as some of his local admirers have done, yet he will long be 

 remembered as one of the most prominent popular writers of the 

 middle of this century, after the Rev. J. G. Wood. He married a Miss 

 Saunders, of Bromsgrove, by whom he had three sons and five 

 daughters. (Some of the particulars in the present notice are compiled 

 from a long obituary in the ' Yorkshire Post ' of Feb. 13th, 1893). 



