Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/256

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THE ZOOLOGIST.

service to Irish Zoology and Botany. Apart from his long service in the Royal Dublin Society's Museum, in which he eventually for a short period—until complete physical collapse ensued—succeeded Dr. Carte as Curator, his life-work must be sought in quiet and unobtrusive contributions to biological knowledge, to the assistance always rendered to other workers, and to the directing power given and enthusiasm afforded to the studies of young naturalists. Under these conditions it is difficult to analyze the career so well told in this volume, written by a sister who with unusual modesty describes on the title-page her memoir as a preface.

More's official connection with the Royal Dublin Museum commenced with his appointment as "first assistant naturalist" at the commencement of 1867. He succeeded the late Dr. Carte in the curatorship near the end of 1881, and after long physical suffering and hoping against hope for the renewed strength that never came, he resigned his position in 1887. During these twenty years, we read, "his room (in the museum) was the rendezvous of all naturalists who came to Dublin"; and after the assumption of his curatorship we find him writing to Prof. Newton: "I don't at all intend to die, or retire, for a long time yet. Not until you shall see what a Museum I will make it." He made many local natural history expeditions on behalf of his museum, and on one of these, in 1873, "a dredging and collecting expedition to Achill and the adjacent coasts," he met with an untimely adventure, from the effects of which he probably never recovered. On the lonely island of Inishkea, about eight miles north of Achill, is, or was, among its solitary inhabitants, a fetish named "Neve-ogue," about which the visitor was wise neither to enquire nor speak about. But stories had got abroad about the benighted condition of these western Irish, and a letter had appeared in print headed "Idolatry in the 19th Century."

This had aroused the fierce indignation of the islanders, and, as not unusual, the wrong man paid the penalty. The unoffending More was surrounded by a group of angry islanders, "and before he could gather the meaning of the situation, a blow from a heavy piece of timber had stretched him on the ground" in an unconscious condition.

After his resignation, and while a hopeless invalid, he was still able to help the cause he had at heart, and from time to time