6 L. A. MOUND 



refers to him as the best entomological field worker in the country and one of the 

 world's authorities on thrips. The total of his publications probably approached 

 300 of which 125 referred to Thysanoptera. He was particularly interested in 

 Zoocecidia (with J. W. Harrison) and the apterygote insects and myriapods. He was 

 clearly an excellent naturalist and his contemporaries refer to his remarkable powers 

 of finding small arthropods in the field. However, his habit of pronouncing on 

 ' new species ' with only the help of a hand lens was regarded as rather eccentric. 

 Although of a cheerful and friendly disposition, his methods of curation and mercurial 

 temperament resulted in a number of bitter personal attacks during the 1930s. 



According to the account books of the University of Oxford (teste E. B. Poulton) 

 Bagnall was paid as an assistant curator of the Hope Department and as a special 

 demonstrator in the Department of Zoology for the period October 1912 until 1st 

 January, 1914. Thereafter his business affairs seem to have involved him in con- 

 siderable travelling. During the period 1904-1949 he has been recorded as having 

 17 different addresses (teste G. D. Morison). As a result he did not always have 

 access to his collections of insects or literature and he had to borrow papers from 

 other workers. Much of his descriptive work was apparently done without reference 

 to specimens of previously described species. He continued to work on Thysan- 

 optera until shortly before his death, although he ceased publication in 1936. As a 

 result his collection contains numerous manuscript names, although in many cases 

 the specimens can now be referred to common British species. 



THE COLLECTIONS 



As a result of his peripatetic way of life Bagnall, for many years, was unable to 

 keep his collection of Thysanoptera available for study in any one place. Much of 

 it had to be kept in store for varying lengths of time apart from the year he spent at 

 Oxford in 1913. His correspondence and sometimes his publications refer to the 

 fact that he was unable to check some point of detail ' as my collection is not 

 immediately available '. For this reason in 1932 he decided to ask the Trustees of 

 the British Museum (Natural History) to purchase the collection in order that it 

 should be properly curated and more readily available for his use. At that time 

 there were about 17,000 specimens in the collection, of which 5,000 were on slides. 

 There were 430 Type specimens and 750 paratypes. However, in addition to this, 

 Bagnall had presented specimens to the Museum over the preceding years and 

 continued to present them until his death. He also described a number of species 

 from material already in the British Museum collection, and these combined collec- 

 tions now contain about 10,000 slides of more than 1,200 recognized species, in 

 addition to unworked material. 



Black slides. During 1913 Bagnall experimented with a new mountant. Many 

 slides made during that year, including some type specimens, have turned dark 

 brown to jet black. When viewed with a strong light the specimens on these slides 

 can be seen to be partially dissolved, leaving a series of large pale crystals. The 

 mountant of one such slide was found to dissolve readily in phenol, but of the 

 specimen only a wing, a leg and some abdominal sclerites remained intact. It is 



