NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE Vol. XLI. MAY 1938. No. 1. IN MEMORY OF LORD ROTHSCHILD, Ph.D., F.R.S., J.P. BORN THE 8TH FEBRUARY, 1868, DIED THE 27TH AUGUST, 1937. By dr. KARL JORDAN, F.R.S. (With 13 photographs.) 1" lONEL WALTER, second Baron Roth-■*-^ schild of Tring, will always occupy a place of honour in the history of Zoology. The collections contained in the Museum he founded and maintained are the largest ever assembled by one man, and are in many orders of animals um-ivalled even by National Museums, a fit monument to an enthusiastic Zoologist. But he acquired still greater merit by generously placing the contents of the Museum at the service of Science. Numerous letters of condolence from biologists testify to the high esteem in which the deceased was held as a man and scientist and to the deep gratitude of the many specialists who have profited by the Tring Museum in their researches. Lord Rothschild was probably the last non-professional systematist who amassed large collections in more than one class of animals. Love of animals being the original motive for the foundation of the Tring Museum, and the study of problems of evolution its ultimate aim, one must expect to find exemphfied in it the various stages or phases we observe in the development of Zoology during the last hundred years. The animals which lend themselves to easy pre-servation in a dry state, such as insects, shells, and skins of mammals and birds, were in post-Linnean times collected and classified largely by amateur systematists, the pubUc Museums of Natural History being as yet in their early youth and the professional zoologists of the Universities concentrating almost exclusively on the classes of animals which had to be preserved in Kquid. In our days the amateur systematist has to restrict his researches carried out at home to groups of manageable proportions, the National Museums with their much enlarged staffs ' »16 1939 Age 7. Age 10.