NOTES AND NEWS. 



283 



Newspapers received from South Africa show that our old friend and colleague 

 'Mr. S. D. Bairstow, F.L.S., formerly of Hudderstield, and now of Port Elizabeth, 

 in the Cape Colony, is devoting his energies to the investigation of the natural 

 history of that district with as much zeal and determination as he was known to do 

 hy his friends in the old country. The Society of which he is at once secretary and 

 guiding spirit, is working at various branches of the comparatively unknown natural 

 history of South Africa, and with a gratifying amount of success, as its reports 

 show. The conchological report shows that attention is being paid to the marine 

 shells, with the assistance of Mr, G. B. Sowerby, jun., of London, and we note 

 that one of the novelties figures on his authority as Latirus Bairstowii, a graceful 

 acknowledgment of the services which that gentleman has rendered to the cause 

 of natural science in South Africa. 



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Two well-known Lancashire naturalists have recently been lost to us — 

 Nicholas Cooke and Joseph Sidebotham. 



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Nicholas Cooke died suddenly on the 19th of May, while on a visit to an 

 entomological friend in Surrey. He was 68 years of age, and had been a hard- 

 working entomologist for nearly fifty of those years. A disciple of the Friends' 

 school at York, the contemporary and almost the last survivor of a generation of 

 practical entomologists, of whom Thomas Henry Allis was the type. Among the 

 discoveries associated with the name of Nicholas Cooke and of his brother 

 Benjamin, we may refer to Nyssia zonaria, Deilephila galii, Cheiniatobia boreata, 

 and the re-discovery of Agrotis ash-worthii. An appreciative notice by Mr. C. S. 

 Gregson, which appears in the Yoinig A'attcralist for June, recapitulates a long list 

 of Cooke's discoveries. 



*<xx 



In this case it is a satisfaction to know that a well-known and valuable collection 

 is not to be dispersed far and wide by the auctioneer's hammer, nor is it to be sent 

 to the uttermost ends of the earth. The Liverpool Corporation is to acquire, 

 under Nicholas Cooke's will, the whole of his fine natural history collections. 

 These include exceptionally complete and carefully-named collections of birds' eggs 

 and of British lepidoptera. In the latter are incorporated the whole collection of 

 Noah Greening, the well-known lepidopterist of Warrington, and extensive 

 selections from those made by the late Edwin Birchall. 



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Joseph Sidebotham died at his residence, Bowdon, near Manchester, on the 30th 

 of May, at the age of 62. He was not only well known as an entomologist, but also in 

 other walks of scientific and literary research. He was a man of culture, an artist 

 and a musician, an excellent photographer and an accomplished microscopist. In 

 astronomy he was of great assistance to Nasmyth when the latter published his 

 work on the moon. In botany it was he who first drew the attention of Manchester 

 naturalists to the freshwater alg^ of their district, and the five or six years which 

 he devoted to the botany of Bredbury, Reddish, and the banks of the Tame were 

 productive of twenty-five species additional to the Manchester flora, many of them 

 belonging to the difficult genera Ridms and Carex. He was a warm friend to 

 science, and to the various scientific institutions of Manchester. 



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Part 8 of the Transactions of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, which has 

 lately appeared, contains two Presidential Addresses, one on ' The Fathers of 

 Yorkshire Botany,' an historical account of the men who laid the foundation of our 

 present knowledge, by Mr. J. Gilbert Baker, F.R.S., delivered in 1884, and the 

 other by Lord Walsingham, whose subject is the ' Probable Causes of a Tendency 

 to Melanic Variation in Lepidoptera of High Latitudes,' delivered in March of this 

 year. The conclusion of the Rev. H. H. Slater's useful ' Flora of Ripon and 

 neighbourhood ' is also given, and a continuation of Messrs. Taylor and Nelson's 

 carefully worked out ' Annotated List of the Land and Freshwater MoUusca known 

 to inhabit Yorkshire,' a paper in which geographical distribution is dealt with as it 

 ought to be in a county list, precisely and in a fully detailed manner. 



July 1885. 



