XXV111. 
OBITUARY: 
MR. RICHARD HELMS. 
By the death of Mr. Richard Helms, which occurred at Sydney 
on July 17th, 1914, Australian Science has lost a versatile and en- 
thusiastic worker in many branches, and the Royal Society of West- 
ern Australia one of its few honorary members. 
Richard Helms was born at Alton a, in Holstein, on December 
12th, 1842, and arrived in Australia in 1858. At different periods 
of his life he resided at Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth, as well as 
in several New Zealand cities, and he was in turn a tobacconist, a 
dentist, a watchmaker, and finally an experimentalist in the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture of New South Wales. 
For a review of his scientific work in other portions of Aus- 
tralasia the reader should refer to the account of him contained in 
the Presidential Address delivered to the Royal Society of New 
South W ales on May 5, 1915, by Mr. Charles Hedley, from which 
the foregoing particulars are taken. 
He first visited Western Australia as naturalist to the Elder 
Exploring Expedition which entered the State from South Australia 
on July 18, 1891, in the neighbourhood of Blyth Range, from which, 
after visiting the Cavanagh and Barrow Ranges, it crossed the Great 
Victoria Desert to Queen Victoria Spring and Fraser’s Range. From 
Fraser’s Range the party travelled to Southern Cross and thence 
northward to the Murchison, where the expedition was dissolved 
in January, 1892. 
The collections made by Helms on this expedition are our chief 
source of knowledge as to the fauna of the dry interior regions of 
Western Australia, and he added considerably to our knowledge of 
their flora. These collections are described by various specialists in 
the transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, vol. NVI. ; 
Helms himself contributing a valuable account of the natives of 
the several tribes met with, notes on whom he had taken during the 
journey in the intervals of his work as collector. 
From 1896 to 1900 he was ini Western Australia as Biologist to 
the Department of Agriculture. During this period he published a 
number of papers on subjects connected with the work on which he 
was engaged, of which the following is a list — 
Apiculture: The Honey Bee (3 articles); Foul Brood or 
Bee Pest. 
Animal Parasites; The Fowl Tick; The Common Bot-fly of 
the Horse; The Parasites of the Sheep (external and 
internal) ; A Horse-Bot new to the Southern Hemis- 
phere; The Cattle Tick; The Camel Tick; The Bot-flies 
of Cattle; The Camel Bot; Parasites of Poultry (ex- 
ternal and internal) ; Horse-Bots; On the Synonymy of 
Ticks. 
