302 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



MEMOIR OF THE LATE W. K. PARKER, F.R.S. 



The saddest task which can fall to the lot of an editor is that 

 of chronicling, from time to time, the loss of a valued friend and 

 contributor ; and when, as in the present case, the hand of death 

 has been laid upon one who shone conspicuously amongst his 

 fellow-men, the task is indeed a heavy one. 



It would be difficult to overrate the loss which zoological 

 science has sustained by the death of William Kitchen Parker, 

 which occurred suddenly, at Cardiff, on the 3rd of July last ; for, 

 as an exceptionally skilled anatomist and a most original worker, 

 he held, in his own particular line of research, an almost unique 

 position— a circumstance the more remarkable by his being in 

 a great measure a self-taught man. 



Deprived of the advantages of a University education, and 

 without any of those aids to learning which are afforded by the 

 Science Schools of the present day, he owed all the knowledge 

 which he acquired to an intense love of Nature prompting and 

 developing a taste for original research, which, in spite of many 

 obstacles, he assiduously cultivated to the last. Few men pro- 

 bably have commenced a scientific career under greater difficulties 

 than he must have experienced ; but his indomitable energy and 

 perseverance, combined with natural talent, eventually placed 

 him in the foremost rank of modern scientists. 



Born in 1823, the son of a farmer, at Dogsthorpe, near Peter- 

 borough, his early days were spent first at a school at Werrington, 

 and subsequently at Peterborough Grammar School, under the 

 head-mastership of the Rev. W. Cape. While still a youth he was 

 apprenticed to Mr. Woodroffe, a chemist at Stamford, with whom 

 he remained for three years, and it was here that he enjoyed 

 opportunities for studying the varied fauna and flora of some of 

 the then undrained fen-lands. We have heard him descant with 

 rapture on the insects, birds, and plants which were to be found 

 in Borough Fen, Thorpe Fen, and Whittlesea, Deeping and 

 Crowland ; and it is curious to note that, in the prosecution of 

 a taste for Natural History, he began work as a botanist. 

 Although engaged all day in business, he would rise in summer 

 at 4 a.m., and, with a fellow-apprentice, would spend three or 



