April, 1922 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
8 ; 
THE LATE DR. SHIRLEY. 
Queensland natural history suffered a distinct loss by 
the death on the 5th April of Dr. John Shirley. He was 
.always an ardent supporter of the Field Naturalists ’ Club 
.and Gould League of Bird Lovers, of each of which he was 
a past President. His was a familiar figure at the Club’s 
meetings and outings, particularly the more extended 
.excursions, as he was chiefly a naturalist of the open air, 
and not merely a text-book and laboratory student. 
Australia would be the richer if more of our public 
men were sufficiently wide-visioned to take such a healthy 
interest in the great out-of-doors. That interest was part 
of Dr. Shirley’s being, and only those who “went bush” 
in his company knew the zest with which this naturalist 
of past seventy would scale a height or clamber into a 
gully — particularly those of delectable Tambourine Moun- 
tain or the Macpherson Range National Park — in pursuit 
of plants or land-shells. 
Dr. Shirley was born at Dorchester (England) in 1849. 
He arrived in Queensland in 1878, and was appointed head 
teacher of the State school at Roma. In 1879 he was 
. appointed District Inspector of Schools, and, while holding 
this office for various parts of the State, travelled, prac- 
tically speaking, over every portion of it. Much of this 
travelling was accomplished at a time when there were no 
railways and very little settlement, schools being a great 
• distance apart. It afforded a good opportunity for pursuing 
natural history studies and the collecting of specimens. 
In 1909 Dr. Shirley was appointed Senior Inspector of 
Schools, and in 1914, when the Teachers’ Training College 
was established, was selected for the position of Principal 
— a post he held till the end of 1919, when he was retired 
under the provisions of the Public Service Act. It may 
here be mentioned that it was characteristic of the man that 
when over sixty years of age he spent the long vacation 
due to him for continuous service in studying and prepar- 
ing a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Science at the 
Sydney University. After leaving the Training College he 
was appointed Conchologist to the Queensland Museum, a 
post he had in previous years filled in an honorary capacity. 
This position he held for one year and nine months, when 
the pruning-knife of retrenchment did away with the posi- 
tion. He was a versatile writer whose studies covered a 
number of branches of natural science, botany and con- 
« etiology being his strongest and most loved subjects. His 
most important published work is The Lichen Flora of 
