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derived no small portion of the pleasure which he felt in his ma- 

 turer years, from the dry and tedious investigations (as some would 

 have deemed them) in which he delighted to engage, to ascertain 

 the names and the relative priority of those given by former na- 

 turalists, to any plant or insect before him. 



Mr. Kirby's taste for natural history lay dormant during his uni- 

 versity studies, as so often happens in similar cases, but was re- 

 excited as soon as he entered on his curacy, proving how important 

 it is that an early bias in this direction should be given in youth, 

 and how vast a fund of enjoyment is lost to our clergy from the 

 unfortunate neglect of this science in our schools. The land-shells 

 about Barham, which it is probable from his boyish predilections he 

 would first collect, being soon exhausted, he naturally turned his 

 attention to botany, and in the course of time became thoroughly 

 acquainted with the flowering-plants around him, which he inves- 

 tigated by the aid of Smith's ' English Botany ' and other botanical 

 works. When these were becoming scarce, that he began to ob- 

 serve the Cryptogamic tribes, may be inferred from his having one 

 day in the spring of 1809 conducted Sir W. Hooker and Mr. Spence 

 to the habitat of a rare species of Marchantia? on a particular 

 bank, several miles from Barham, — the excursion ending in a ludi- 

 crous adventure, which in after years he often related when speak- 

 ing of his natural history rambles. 



How far his Cryptogamic investigations would have been pur- 

 sued, it is impossible to say ; but it is not unlikely that but for an 

 incident which turned his thoughts into another channel, that of 

 Entomology, he might have been led to carry them out with the 

 characteristic ardour with which he followed up every pursuit in 

 which he engaged, and that Mosses, Lichens and Confervas would 

 have absorbed that attention which he afterwards gave exclusively 

 to insects. 



The incident referred to, which he has himself very graphically 

 related in the 'Introduction to Entomology' (vol. ii. p. 227), was 

 his accidentally observing and being led to admire and preserve a 

 yellow Cow-lady (^Coccinella 22-punctata), v/hich was crawling on 

 his window-sill. So little up to this time had he attended to in- 

 sects, that this species, which is not uncommon, struck him with 

 surprise and admiration, and led him forthwith to search for others ; 

 and every new acquisition increasing his wonder and delight with 

 the vast and beauteous region of Nature thus opened to his view, he 

 threw aside botany and devoted himself wholly to entomology — 

 thus affording another proof, how great events spring from small 

 causes. 



While collecting and studying the insects round Barham for 

 some years, during which he communicated several valuable papers 

 to the Linnean Society, of which he had become a Fellow, he par- 

 ticularly directed his attention to the tribe of wild-bees, and finding 

 how few of them were described and how little they had been syste- 

 matically studied, he made notes on the various species and fami- 

 lies, till at length his materials were so considerable as to become 



