466 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
took a deep interest, and was one of its Vice-Presidents. As a 
scientific worker he was not rapid, but careful and exact, and his con- 
clusions were ever held in esteem, whilst his fine drawings and those 
of Mrs. Traquair were worthy of all praise. It is true he may have 
yearned for a Scotch Professorship, yet it is doubtful if in that 
capacity he would have had either the time or the opportunity for 
the splendid work he accomplished in the Paleeichthyology, especially 
of the Devonian and Carboniferous Strata, of Scotland. In the Royal 
Scottish Museum he laboured for thirty-three years, producing no 
fewer than one hundred and thirty memoirs and papers, chiefly on 
fossil fishes, his researches being based on morphological structure, 
and not on the scales and teeth so much relied on by Agassiz and the 
older workers. After a year or two of failing health, he passed 
quietly away on the 22nd of November. 
Dr. Traquair was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London 
in 1881, received the Degree of LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1893, was 
awarded the Neill Medal (1878) and the Macdougall-Brisbane Medal 
(1901) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Lyell Medal of the 
Geological Society of London (1901), and a Royal Medal of the Royal 
Society of London in 1907. <A true worker, he laboured until he fell, 
and our country is the poorer by the absence of one of the most 
distinguished authorities in Paleichthyology, of a genial, cultured, 
and kindly man of science, and of a lover of everything that was 
noble and good. 
W. C. McIntosz. 
WinuidM Forsett Kirey. 
W. I’. Kirpy, who passed away on Nov. 20th, in his residence at 
Chiswick, was born in Leicester on Jan. 14th, 1844, and was therefore 
in his sixty-ninth year. He was the eldest son of Samuel Kirby, a 
banker, his mother’s maiden name being Lydia Forsell, and it was 
her proposition that young William should make a collection of butter- 
flies, thus probably starting a well-known entomological career. This 
had already been incited by the constant reading of ‘Uncle Philip’s 
Conversations with Children,’ while an old friend of the family (Dr. 
Noble) had given him a copy of Dunean’s ‘ British Butterflies.’ His 
mother disapproved of schools, so he and his brothers were privately 
educated, a fact which he regretted, as he thought that the com- 
panionship of other boys might have firmed a too gentle disposition, 
