268 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



MEMOIR OF THE LATE W. S. DALLAS, F.L.S. 



The news of the unexpected death of William Sweetland 

 Dallas has caused a pang of wide-spread regret far beyond the 

 pale of the Society in which he was best known, and in which, 

 for two-and-twenty years, he ably discharged the duties of 

 Assistant Secretary. Not only has the Geological Society lost 

 the valued services of one whom it will be very difficult to 

 replace, but very many workers in Zoology as well as Geology 

 who have been accustomed to seek his aid and advice, will feel 

 that in him they have lost a good friend. His attainments were 

 of no mean order. His knowledge of modern languages was 

 considerable, and his acquaintance with the general literature of 

 the subjects to which he was especially devoted, coupled with the 

 experience which he had acquired as Editor of two important 

 periodicals, caused him to be regarded with respect and esteem 

 by all who knew him. 



Mr. Dallas had not yet reached the allotted age of three- 

 score-years-and-ten when death overtook him. He was born 

 in 1824, and was the youngest son of Mr. William Dallas, of 

 Lloyd's, who died in 1836. Educated at University College 

 School, he evinced from the first a taste for Natural History, and 

 spent much of his early life in the Insect Room of the British 

 Museum, where he received much encouragement in his studies 

 from the late Dr. J. E. Gray, who was then the Keeper of the 

 Zoological Department. Entomology was his favourite science, 

 and his zeal in pursuit of it may be judged from the fact that he 

 took the trouble, when a young man, to transcribe the whole of 

 the ' Entomologia Systematica' of Fabricius (a work in four vols, 

 of between two and three thousand octavo pages), to which he 

 added a coloured figure of the type-species in each genus, either 

 from nature or from some approved authority. 



So early as 1847 he began to contribute papers to the 

 1 Transactions of the Entomological Society of London,' and in 

 1851 commenced the preparation of a 'List of the Hemipterous 

 Insects in the Collection of the British Museum,' which he 

 completed the following year. In 1854-55, he published in 

 Orr's 'Circle of the Sciences' a series of articles on the habits, 

 structure, and classification of animals, which he afterwards 



