Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London - University Library

34
PEOCEEDINGS OF THE
and was published in ibe Eoyal Society's ' Proceedings,' 18G5. A.
list will be found in that Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers,
which however omits his paper in the ' Zoologist,' xiv. 1854,
pp. 436-438, on Cyanide of Potassium for killing insects.
It was on December 16tb, 1845, that Buckton became a Fellow
of the Linnean Society, coming into contact with Yarrell, Westwood,
Wilson Saunders, Owen, Huxley, the Hookers, and other
naturalists, and contributions from his pen are to be found in our
Proceedings, Journals, and Transactions.
In 1852 he was made a Fellow of the Chemical Society ; and in
1857 was elected to the E-oyal Society, becoming a member of the
Philosophical Club of that Society, whose meetings he attended
with great interest (in spite of the effort any journey entailed) till
extreme old age compelled him to relinquish them. In 1883 he
became a member of the Entomological Society ; and later of the
Entomological Society of France, and of the Academy of Natural
Sciences, Philadelphia.
In 1865 Buckton married Mary Ann, the only sister of his
friend Professor W. Odling of Oxford. He purchased the estate
of Weycombe, Haslemere, Surrey, then a rural village, where he
built himself a stone-gabled house, according to his own designs,^
taking with him his observatory and transit instruments. Here
he lived for the remainder of his peaceful and happy married life.
Of his eight children, five daughters and a son are still living.
From this time, though he kept his chemical laboratoiw and latheroom
and gave private lectures to his children and his friends, he
devoted himself to Natural History, beginning with a study of the
Parthenogenesis of Aphides, which resulted in four volumes on
British Aphides for the Eay Society, 1876-1883, with profuse illustrations
made under the camera hicida, which he lithographed on
blocks of stone and coloured with his own hand. This was the first
of his valuable sei'ies of Entomological monographs relating chiefly
to the obscure and somewhat neglected suborder Homoptera. In
1890 he published his Monograph of Britisli Cicad^e, or Tettigidaj
(2 vols., Macmillan), in which he was helped by his children, who
collected specimens and worked at the colouring of many of the
plates. This was followed by the ' Natural Historj^ of ErisfaUs
tenax, or the Drone-fly ' (published by Macmillan, 1895), and finally
by a large and important work on the Membracidse of the Woi'ld
(Lovell Reeve & Co., 1901-1903), the Supplement to which, with
many drawings, was finished for the Transactions of the Linnean
Society only two months before the author's death. The original
plates of the Monograph have been presented to the Hope Museum,
Oxford. His lightness of hand in setting his many hundred slides
was remarkable. Often in laying out the delicate nervous
organisation of an insect, he would take for the purpose the sting
of a wasp, as the finest procurable tool.
Various societies and museums, abroad and in the colonies, were
in communication with him, and he had a wide correspondence.