In yieinoriam : Alfred Beautnont. 



which he entertained on his invitation to a sort of picnic meet- 

 ing", the members of the Naturalists' Society and their friends in 

 the beautiful g-rounds of his house at Wilshaw, when his 

 larg-e collections were thrown open for inspection. At that time 

 Beaumont was as keen an ornitholog-ist as he was a lepidopterist, 

 and his fine collection of well-mounted British birds was known 

 far and wide. It contained many local rarities, including- a pair 

 of Waxwings shot at Fenay Bridg-e, a Bittern killed at Honley, 

 and many others. On the other hand, several specimens which 

 Beaumont had bought as * undoubtedly British,' and apparently 

 on g-ood authority, were afterwards known to have been 

 fraudulently imposed upon him. These included an Andalusian 

 Quail, a White's Thrush, and a Ross' Gull. Unfortunately, 

 too, the records of one or two of these as British examples had 

 been widely circulated. 



His collection of lepidoptera was then by far the finest in the 

 district, and contained many g-reat rarities. Perhaps the species 

 in which the greatest interest then and since centred were some 

 specimens of Xotodonta hicolor, taken and bred by Mr. John Ray 

 Hardy from Burnt Wood, Staffordshire, about 1865, since 

 which captures the species has not, I believe, been taken in Britain. 

 One of the specimens g-iven to him by Beaumont, in 1896, now 

 represents the species in the writer's cabinet. Nothing could 

 exceed the generosity of Beaumont in the matter of his dupli- 

 cates. It was his delight to spread open his boxes before his 

 friends and absolutely to make them take out everything they 

 wanted ; whilst his scorn for the present day system of bargain- 

 ing with duplicates was unbounded. Nor can the writer forget 

 the happy days long since, when Beaumont used to repeatedly 

 drive him, then little more than a schoolboy, for afternoons' 

 collecting in the Storthes Hall woods, nor the enjoyable meals at 

 the inn near by, when the afternoon's work was over. 



On the removal of Beaumont to London his ornithological 

 and entomological collections were disposed of, with the excep- 

 tion of a few of the rarities from each which he retained. The 

 birds now form the chief portion of the beautiful collection in 

 the museum of the Technical College, Huddersfield. After 

 a prolonged visit to Mr, and Mrs. Stainton at Mountsfield, Mr. 

 and Mrs. Beaumont settled down near their friends' residence at 

 Lewisham, in 1884, when Beaumont's collecting propensities 

 at once impelled him to active field work again ; but his energies 

 were now devoted to several of w4iat have been termed the 

 * neglected orders ' of insects, rather than to the lepidoptera, 



1905 April I. 



