152 Obituary. 



He was one of the original founders of the Philosophical Institute 

 of Victoria— one of the parent bodies afterwards merged in this 

 Society — and contributed several papers to its Transactions. 



JOHN JBTLE BAILEY. 



Died June, 1884. 



Mr. Bailey, who was one of the most successful and intelligent 

 collectors of natural history specimens that we have ever had in 

 Victoria, is deserving of remembrance by the scientific world 

 in Australia for the contributions with which he enriched many 

 of our public institutions. He had to contend against many 

 difficulties when young, and all that he knew was acquired 

 by the most honourable devotion to a life-long course of self- 

 instruction. When a lad he served as signal-boy with the army 

 at the Crimea, and it was there, on foreign shores, that his 

 love of making collections of shells and fossils was first developed. 



After coming to this colony he constantly filled up the leisure 

 left him by a laborious and exacting business in the collection 

 of specimens, and he was one of the most active and zealous 

 workers in the ranks of the Field Naturalist Club. 



He has rendered most material assistance to some of our 

 leading scientific writers in the colonies, and their gratitude 

 has found its usual mode of expression in the designation of 

 species by the name of the collector. Purpura Bayleana, for 

 instance, is figured in our own Transactions, Vol. XVII., p. 83. 

 One of Mr. Bailey's most prominent discoveries was that of a 

 fossil species of whale hitherto unknown, and described in 

 Victorian Palaeontology (Plate XLV., fig. 1, 2) under the name 

 Physetodon Bailey i. 



Mr. Bailey's death was occasioned by his devotion to his 

 scientific pursuits. In the search for fossil remains in a newly 

 opened bed in the rocks at Cheltenham, he entered the water 

 and continued his researches while wet ; the result being a 

 chill which caused death in a few days. 



