CUMING was fitted for his work not more by his scientific ardour and his patient toil-bearing, than by his amiable character. He loved children. His manner was so attractive to them that in some places to which he travelled a schoolful of children were extemporised into botanic missionaries. The joyous band would turn out for a holiday, and would spend the whole of it in searching for the plants, the shells, and the insects, with the general forms and appearances of which the promoter and rewarder of their voluntary labours had previously familiarised them. He returned to England with such a collection of shells as no previous investigator had brought home; and with about one hundred and thirty thousand specimens of dried plants, besides many curious specimens in other departments. [Sidenote: R. Owen, _On a National Museum of Natural History_, pp. 53, seqq.] His collections had been a London marvel before he set out on his third voyage of discovery. He then possessed, I believe, almost sixteen thousand _species_, and they were regarded as a near approximation to a perfect collection, according to the knowledge of the time. [Sidenote: Comp. _Athenæum_ as above, and the Museum returns of 1865 and subsequent years.] If the writer of the able notice of him which the _Athenæum_ published immediately after his death was rightly informed, CUMING nearly doubled that number by the results of his final voyage, and by those of subsequent purchases made in Europe. Very naturally, strenuous efforts were made to ensure the perpetuity of this noble collection during its owner’s lifetime. The history of those efforts still deserves to be told, and for more than one reason. But it cannot be told here. This inadequate notice of a most estimable man must close with the few words which, three years ago, closed Professor OWEN’S annual _Report on the Progress of the Zoological Portion of the British Museum_. ‘The discoveries and labours of Mr. Hugh CUMING,’ he then wrote, ‘do honour to his country; the fruition of them by Naturalists of all countries now depends mainly _on the acquisition of the space required for the due arrangement, exhibition—facility of access and comparison—of the rarities which the Nation has acquired_.’ And then he adds a small individual instance, as a passing illustration of the value of Mr. CUMING’S life-long pursuit—‘Among the choicer rarities, ... brought from the Philippines in 1840, was a specimen of siliceous sponge (described and figured in the _Transactions of the Zoological Society_), known as _Euplectella Aspergillum_.’ Up to the date of Mr. CUMING’S death (tenth August, 1865), this specimen—of what, for non-zoological readers, may be likened to a sort of coral of rare beauty—brought over in 1840, was unique. [Sidenote: _Transactions_, &c., vol. iii, p. 203.] In the year next after the discoverer’s death, _many_ fine and curious specimens were sent from the Philippines. The solitary explorer of 1839