Mil. K. n. PALMER ON OLD-TIME YARMOUTH NATURALISTS. 75 
peculiar conditions of the localities near the town, such as the 
Caister marrams, the parts of. the beach to which they were driven 
by gusts of wind, the attractions of the brightness of the Lowestoft 
lighthouse, the heaps of fresh sea-weeds, and the like. The studies 
of the few naturalists who lived in or near Yarmouth when Charles 
Paget began to collect insects may be a good illustration of what 
Kirby and Spence noted in their preface, as to the zeal shown 
before 1820 in the pursuit of botany, and the ridicule and contempt 
in which entomology was held. Dawson Turner, Lilly Wigg, and 
Hooker fully maintained, in Yarmouth, the renown of the Norfolk 
school of botanists ; but thei’e was not one active entomologist in 
the town till Charles Paget began to work. The extent of his 
work, his true zeal and industry in it, may be estimated by the 
extent of the list of insects given in the ‘Natural History of 
Yarmouth,’ in which all that relates to insects was written by him. 
Every species there enumerated had been examined, named, and 
arranged by him; and of nearly every one he had one or more 
specimens displayed in natural posture. Many he bred from the 
eggs, and these he often illustrated by water-colour drawings of 
them in the larval and pupal, as well as in the complete state. 
Of course the list may now be deemed very incomplete indeed ; 
in his own interleaved copy of it, he added about 100 species 
which he collected in a few years after its publication, and he 
never doubted that many more might yet be found. In the sixty 
years that have passed since that time some species may have ceased 
to survive in the altered conditions of the land and water ; but 
those may have been more than replaced by new species migrating 
to the new conditions, and better methods of capture may have 
been invented. Still the list, and the general commentary on 
what it tells, which is given in the introductory essay, may be 
regarded as a remarkable example of the work in Natural History, 
which may be well done by one young man in the few hours that 
can be spared in an active life at school and in business. And, 
certainly, it may be studied as an illustration of the charms of 
a thorough study of even a portion of Natural History, if it be 
remembered that all this “ dull work,” as some would call it, was 
the chief recreation of twenty years constantly saddened by ill-health 
and anxiety. For, from the age of thirteen years to the close of 
his life, Charles Paget was an invalid, often severely suffering and 
