Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/132

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
122
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tributed by his old friends to the Transactions, Sir Joseph. D. Hooker tells of the time when he first saw him, at Mr. Darwin's, at Down, shortly after his return from the Amazons. "We there spent several days together, and I can remember none more enjoyable. There was such a fascination in his manner and character, and such a boyish, hearty enjoyment of his return to his native country, and all that it contained, from Shakespeare to Punch, and from Darwin to the merest bug-hunter (so long as the work was honest). Darwin's appreciation of him was wholehearted and all-round, and Bates's first visit to Down was marked with a white stone in his host's memory, as in mine, and often recurred to by us." "Perhaps, to know him at his best," says Mr. Edward Clodd, "and pierce the thick husk of his modesty, was when, the evening employment of beetle-sticking over, and the frugal supper eaten, the pipe was lit and talk started, sometimes on some topic of the day, but, more often, on some subject suggested by his wide and varied reading." Says a writer in The Academy, whose initials indicate that he is also Mr. Clodd: "His leisure hours, diversified by chat with one or two intimates and by omnivorous reading, were mainly devoted to the classification of certain families of the Coleoptera, his collection of which, although partly in course of dispersal, is unique. . . . The results of this labor of love and of years are entombed in technical memoirs, and notably in the scarcely more accessible Biologia Centrali Americana." Hooker was impressed with his "power of mind," and with that, says this writer, "was conjoined the simplicity and teachableness of a child."

Mr. Bates received many honors, but he never spoke of them, and no one knows how many or what they were. He was made a Fellow of the Linnsean Society in 1871, and of the Royal Society in 1881, and he was twice President of the Entomological Society.



According to Dr. J. J. M. de Groot, of the University of Leyden, whose paper is illustrated by specimens from his collection, the wedding garments of a Chinese woman are symbolical of the happiness, official dignity, and long life which she desires for the numerous children expected to bless the union. These hopes are represented by the dragon, the bat, the stag, the tortoise, and the crane or stork. The head-gear is very elaborate, and is attached by a silver hair-pin with a head of precious stones. These gorgeous garments are frequently used as grave-clothing for the mother, by the piety of the sons, who believe that to place things of good omen in the tombs of ancestors is to secure for themselves and their offspring the blessings of which they are emblems. Asteroid No. 323, the first that was discovered by the aid of photography (by M. Wolf, of Heidelberg, November 28, 1891), has been named Brucia, after Miss C. W. Bruce, of this country, who has appropriated a considerable part of her fortune to the aid of astronomical research.