WATERHOUSE, GEORGE ROBERT English naturalist, was born at Somer's Town on Mar. 6, 1810. He was educated as an architect and for a time followed his pro fession with great success. His real taste, however, was for entomology. In 1833 he and Frederick W. Hope founded the Entomological Society of London and Waterhouse was Made honorary curator and later president. He wrote the natural history articles for Knight's Penny Cyclopaedia. In 1835 he be came curator of the museum of the Royal Institution at Liver pool, giving this up in 1836 for the curatorship of the Zoological Society of London. He made a catalogue of the mammals in the society's museum which was published in 1838 and followed by a supplement in 1839. He declined an invitation to accompany Darwin on the famous voyage of the "Beagle," but on its return Darwin placed the mammals and the coleoptera collected on the voyage with Waterhouse for description. In 1843 he was ap
pointed an assistant in the mineralogical branch of the department of natural history of the British Museum. Of this branch he became keeper in 1851, but in 1857 was transferred to keeper of the department of geology, which post he held until his retirement in 1880. He died at Putney on Jan. 21, 1888.
His special studies were on coleoptera and on the group Heteromera. He began in 1844 a Natural History of the Mam malia of which two volumes (1846-1848), treating of the Mar supialia and Rodentia, were published when the publisher found himself unable to continue the work. Waterhouse published also a Catalogue of British Coleoptera (1858), and contributed some 120 papers to various scientific journals. He was an indefatigable collector and greatly enriched the museums of which he was curator.