26 
MEMOIRS OF EMINENT LIVING AND RECENTLY-DECEASED 
NATURALISTS, BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 
No. I. —John Latham, M.D., F.R.S., A.S., L.S., &c. 
In conformity with the arrangement announced in our last number (Vol. III., 
p. 498), we now proceed to lay before our readers the commencement of the above 
series, which will be regularly continued every alternate month. 
In noticing the life and labours of the late Dr. Latham, we shall seem, 
probably, to some of our readers, to be recurring to matters out of date—the 
subjects of a former generation. Perhaps indeed there were not many beyond 
the range of his personal acquaintance who were aware that this celebrated 
naturalist was living until very recently, at Winchester. But when we consider 
that his name has, for upwards of half a century, been quoted as an authority 
wherever Natural History is a study, and when we remember that to the close of 
his long life he still retained the respect of the scientific world, his memoir cannot 
be looked upon as otherwise than deeply interesting. 
A life, however lengthened, spent amidst pursuits such as those of our late 
venerable friend, is not likely to afford very much that is interesting to the world 
at large; but to the student of Nature any memorial of such a man must be 
considered valuable. 
John Latham was born at Eltham, in Kent, June 27, 1740. He was the 
eldest son of John Latham, a surgeon and apothecary of that place, who was 
descended from an ancient family in Lancashire. His mother was a descendant 
of the Sothebys, in Yorkshire. When six years of age he was placed at Merchant 
Tailors’ school. Although his talents and acquirements gave a fair promise of 
his sharing the honoui’s and advantages of that establishment, he was removed 
from thence at the age of fifteen, to prepare himself for his father’s profession, to 
which the turn of his own mind strongly inclined him. He studied Anatomy 
under the celebrated Dr. W. Hunter ; and having completed his education at 
the London hospitals and schools of Medicine, he commenced business at Dartford, 
in 1763, at the age of twenty-two, and married in the same year. 
Natural History must have engaged his attention, and been eagerly pursued by 
him, from a very early age. There is in possession of his family a portrait of 
him taken when he was about ten years old, and in which he is represented with 
a bird upon his hand; and so soon as February, 1771, we find him in corres¬ 
pondence with Mr. Pennant, who had then just published his British Zoology. 
Mr. Latham having at that time himself made a considerable collection of 
