itten by him) full of interesting facts
respecting the economy of the insect world. Amongst the scientific,
his reputation depends on a variety of elaborate papers which he wrote
for learned societies on subjects connected with natural history. For
sixty years previous to the conclusion of his long life in 1850, he
had devoted the leisure of a parsonage to that delightful study, and
being a diligent and accurate observer, and an elegant and
entertaining writer, he had attained the highest rank amongst the
British naturalists of his day. It appears, from a memoir just
published,[2] that Mr Kirby was born in 1759, and settled in 1782 in
the cure of Barham, near Ipswich, where he was ultimately rector, and
which he only left for his last long-home sixty-eight years
thereafter. In an age of sluggish theology, he was an earnest minister
and zealous controversialist, all the time that he was cultivating a
taste for natural objects. This is equally unexpected and creditable.
And yet it does not appear that his personal conduct was characterised
by anything like rigour, for, as an example, we find, from the journal
of an entomological excursion in 1797, that it was commenced on a
Sunday afternoon, and involved one other Sunday of constant
travelling. A reference of the dates to an almanac enables us to
establish this fact, so unlike the spirit of a zealous man in our
times.

Of the sister sciences of nature, botany first attracted Mr Kirby's
regards. 'This he pursued in no hasty or superficial manner, but with
the greatest perseverance and research. It was not enough for him to
know a plant by sight, and to ascertain its proper name, but he
compared the minutest parts of inflorescence and fructification; he
sought for the most trifling differences in those nearly allied, and
studied with a keen but generous criticism the various theories of
writers on the science, from the earliest age to the time of the
immortal Linne. Of every plant he met with, even to the daisy and
primrose, the whole physiological structure was thoroughly
investigated; he discovered, or rather observed, what it was which
enabled some plants to endure great changes of temperature, while
others perished--the formation which enabled some to live in water,
while others flourished in the most dry and arid sands; he carefully
marked the causes which combined to clothe even rocks with verdure, in
consequence of the wonderful structure of the plants inhabiting th