Kirby, WILLIAM

Kirby, WILLIAM, entomologist, was born at Witnesham Hall, Suffolk, 19th September 1759. He was educated at Ipswich grammar-school and Caius College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1781, took orders in the following year, and was first curate, after 1796 rector, of the quiet Suffolk parish of Barham, where he died, July 4, 1850. His principal works are Monographia Apum Angliæ (Ipswich, 1802), and Introduction to Entomology (4 vols. 1815-26), the latter written conjointly with Mr Spence. The first was very favourably received both at home and abroad, and at once secured for Kirby a distinguished place among European savants. The second work is written in the form of letters (fifty-one in number), giving a familiar account of the habits, instincts, and uses of insects, and remains a classical masterpiece of vulgarisation in the best sense of the word. To the seventh edition Spence contributed an appendix giving the history of the book. Kirby also contributed a variety of very important entomological papers to the Linnaean Transactions. His greatest discovery in this department of science is that of the genus Stylops—the type of a new order of insects, living in the larva state parasitically in the bodies of bees. He also wrote one of the Bridgewater Treatises, entitled Habits and Instincts of Animals (1835). Kirby was one of the first members of the Linnaean Society (founded in 1788), honorary president of the Entomological Society, and Fellow of the Royal and Geological Societies. See the Life by the Rev. John Freeman (1852).