APPENDIX, 
[CHAPTER XY. OF MR. FREEMAN’S LIFE OF MR. KIRBY.] 
Ir is with a mournful pleasure I contribute to my friend Mr. Freeman’s 
Life of Mr. Kirby a slight sketch of the history of our friendship of 
_ nearly half a century, and of the origin and progress of the “ Introduction 
to Entomolgy,” the source of so much interest and delight to us both ; 
partly from recollection, but chiefly from Mr. Kirby’s letters to me 
during that time, and from mine to him.* 
Our acquaintance began in this way. Chancing, one evening, in 
August 1805, when walking on the Humber bank, to meet my friend 
George Rodwell, Esq., then a resident at Hull, he told me he was about 
to visit Barham in a few days, and said if I had any insects to send to 
Mr, Kirby he should be happy to convey them, This offer I gladly 
* These letters, with which Mr. Freeman has furnished me, are between four and 
five hundred in number ; and thosefrom Mr, Kirby, which I have preserved with as 
much care as he had mine, are nearly as many. About half of the two series of 
letters refer almost wholly to entomology and our book, but a great part of the re- 
mainder, exchanged during my eight years’ travels and residence on the Continent, 
and after my return to England, are more oceupied with accounts of our tours, &c., 
and of domestic matters. Our entomological letters, in those days of dear postage, 
were mostly written on sheets of large folio paper, so closely, that each would equal 
a printed sheet of sixteen pages of ordinary type. ‘These we called our “ first-rates,” 
or sometimes “seventy-fours,” the few on ordinary-sized paper being “ frigates ; ” 
but one I find from Mr. Kirby, which he calls the “ Royal Harry,” written 
on a sheet nearly the size of a “Times” supplement, and closely filled on three 
ages, and which he begins and concludes thus : —‘ Barham, March 23. 1816. My 
ear Friend, — This doubtless will be the greatest rarity in the epistolary way that 
you ever received. I hope it will long be kept among your xeyenAta, and be shown, 
not as a black, but as a black and white swan, which since the discovery of the 
former in N.S. W., must be held as the true rara avis.... And now, having 
manned this Royal Harry with as large a complement of men as I could muster, I 
shalllaunch her. I question whether ever one of equal tonnage before crossed the 
Humber.” With the love of order which Mr. Kirby’s study of natural history had 
so deeply implanted in him, all my letters are folded across the sheet, so as to be of 
the same breadth of about two inches, and have an index on the back of each, re- 
ferring te the various subjects (often 15 to 20) of the letter, which he marked in it 
by large figures in brackets, so as readily to-catch the eye ; and they were then 
docketed with red tape into a packet for each year. 
