history. His reputation is based not so much on the discoveries made
by him in the science as on the manner of its teaching. No man ever
approached the study of the works of nature with a purer or more
earnest zeal. His interpretation of the distinguishing characters of
insects for the purposes of classification has excited the warmest
approval of entomologists at home and abroad; while his agreeable
narrative of their wonderful transformations and habits, teeming with
analyses and anecdote, has a charm for almost every kind of reader.

Mr. Kirby's first work of particular note was the "Monographia Apum
Angliæ", in two volumes published half a century ago at Ipswich; to
which town he was much endeared, and in whose Museum, as President,
under the friendly auspices of its Secretary, Mr. George Ransome, he
took a lively interest. His admirable work on the Wild Bees of Great
Britain was composed from materials collected almost entirely by
himself,--and most of the plates were of his etching. Entomology was
at that time a comparatively new science in this country, and it is an
honorable proof of the correctness of the author's views that they are
still acknowledged to be genuine.

His further progress in entomology is abundantly marked by various
papers in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society",--by the
entomological portion of the Bridgewater Treatise "On the History,
Habits, and Instincts of Animals,"--and by his descriptions, occupying
a quarto volume, of the insects of Sir John Richardson's "Fauna
Boreali-Americana." The name of Kirby will, however, be chiefly
remembered for the "Introduction on Entomology" written by him in
conjunction with Mr. Spence. In this work a vast amount of material,
acquired after many years' unremitting observation of the insect
world, is mingled together by two different but congenial minds in