OBITUARY. 



153 



benefit and education of Guernsey. He had also formed a 

 valuable library of entomological books and other works and 

 engravings connected with his native place, and had lately 

 added to his house two capacious rooms for the reception of 

 these treasures. It is a touching circumstance that, on the 

 Saturday, feeling suddenly a great increase of his illness, and 

 walking with extreme difficulty, he made his way to the door 

 of his " Museum," and clinging to the door which he had 

 opened, took a long silent look around, before being led up to 

 his bed from which he never rose again. 



W. A. Luff has made his own name and place in the 

 entomological history of the Channel Isles — and can never 

 have a successor. He has done a pioneer work which will 

 donbtless receive additions from other hands, and may occa- 

 sionally require correction, but it will never need to be done 

 again. He has systematised our knowledge of the entomolo- 

 gical fauna of Guernsey in particular, and of the Channel 

 Isles in general. Every worker in the same field will be 

 indebted to Mr. Luff. All his life he had been collecting 

 material, and his lists of the various families of insects, indi- 

 genous to the Channel Isles, have extended over a period of 

 nearly thirty years. We need not point out the value of such 

 diligent and systematic work to the cause of science. His 

 knowledge, though chiefly confined to the insects of his own 

 home, was thorough, his industry unfailing, and his gifts of 

 observation unusually acute and accurate. We think it doubt- 

 ful if any corresponding portion of Great Britain has been so 

 exhaustively searched, and the results as minutely recorded by 

 any one entomologist, as the Island of Guernsey and its 

 dependencies, by the subject of our notice. He, more fre- 

 quently before the foundation of the Guernsey Society of 

 Natural Science, 1882, contributed notes to the various ento- 

 mological periodicals, but his chief and lasting work is to be 

 found in the Transactions of the local Society. In these 

 pages, from the first publication in 1 882 to within a few weeks 

 of his death, appear, year by year, carefully compiled lists of 

 insects in all departments, recorded for Guernsey. He began 



