142 - THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



OBITUARY. 



Arthur W. Bacot. 



Entomology — one may add, indeed, the Nation — has suffered 

 another irreparable loss in the death of Arthur W. Bacot, briefly 

 announced in the May number of the ' Entomologist.' Still in the 

 prime of life, and in the midst of varied and important scientific 

 researches, he had, by permission of the Lister Institute, gone to 

 Egypt in Government service for investigations into typhus, and at 

 Cairo he made the " supreme sacrifice " on April 12th. Call the con- 

 tracting of the fell disease what we may — an unavoidable accident or 

 a result of insufficient precautions — the greatness of that sacrifice 

 remains; and while we deplore the tragedy, we cannot but recognise 

 in it a fitting coronation of a life of singular unselfishness • and 

 devotion. 



Bacot first became known to the entomological world as a 

 lepidopterist, and during the early nineties of the last century rapidly 

 attained to front rank, mainly owing to his careful work in breeding, 

 his accuracy in describing, and his genius for sound inductive 

 reasoning from his- observations. Although he was a keen field- 

 naturalist, the mere collecting for collecting's sake had little attraction 

 for him ; to obtain the material was ever a challenge to him to use it 

 for some scientific end. Having assimilated, with surprising quick- 

 ness and thoroughness, not only the biological theories of the greatest 

 masters (Galton, Weismann, Mendel and others), but also the 

 detailed descriptive methods of Dyar and Chapman on larvae, pupae, 

 etc., he devoted himself with the greatest assiduity to the elucidation 

 of the life-histories of a number of our British species and groups, 

 notably some of the Sphingids, Endromis, the Liparidae, and— in 

 connection with Tutt's monumental ' British Lepidoptera ' — the 

 Lasiocampidae and Psychidac. 



Most of his earlier papers were produced under the auspices of 

 the smaller natural history societies (the City of London and North 

 London), in which he was a leading light, and were published or 

 re-published chiefly in the 'Entomologist's Record, ' vols, iv to xviii. 

 He did not join our premier entomological society until November, 

 1901, but was thenceforth a regular exhibitor and a valued participant 

 in the discussions. 



It was one of the crimes of our economic system that for many years 

 Bacot's best hours were claimed by routine work in a City office, but 

 the reward of his arduous labours as an amateur came when, in 1911, 

 he was appointed Entomologist to the Lister Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine, and thenceforth he was able to follow untrammelled his 

 natural bent for scientific research. 



In 1914 appeared Bacot's monograph on the bionomics of the 

 common rat fleas, a research undertaken at the invitation of the 

 Commission for the Study of the Plague in India. This work, which 

 stamped Bacot as an investigator of high order, was carried out at his 

 home in Essex, and during the time that he was forced to work all day 

 at the office. He had the services of an assistant to carry out his 

 instructions whilst absent, but even so the difficulties were great. 



