Born in Somerset the son of the Rev. W.R.Crotch and the grandson of Dr W.Crotch, organist to George III. Little is known of his youth except that his father took a post at Cambridge and that his son gained a place at the University matriculating at St.John's College in 1861 and graduating in 1864. In 1866 he was appointed to a post at the University Library and in the following year obtained the better post of second assistant librarian. It was at this time that he gained his M.A. He resigned this post in 1871 in order to undertake a world tour having been awarded a grant of £200 from the Wort's Fund 'for the purpose of collecting specimens in Natural History, and investigating the fauna of those regions'. He intended to visit the United States, Central America, the Pacific Islands and Australia. He set off in October 1872 to spend the winter in Philadelphia studying collections and publishing in the American journals. In the spring of 1873 he crossed to the west coast and spent the summer collecting in California, Oregon and British Columbia. In the autumn he took a post at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. When Professor Agassiz died in 1874 this terminated and Crotch, who was already ailing with tuberculosis, returned to Philadelphia. After six weeks he died at the home of Professor Lesley, and was buried in Philadelphia. During his short life of only thirty two years Crotch achieved a prodigious amount. His interest in entomology appears to have begun with the Lepidoptera on which he published his first note in Zool., 1856, at the age of fourteen. His interest in beetles, which was to dominate the rest of his life, began shortly after, and his first note 'Capture of Sphaerius acaroides, Hydrochus carinatus, etc. in the Fens' appeared in 1861 (ibid., 19, 1861, p.7724). In the following year he exhibited Dermestes frischii Kugelan at the Entomological Society in London and read notes about it, and he added a number of new species to the British list (ibid., 20, 1862, p.8083). At the same time he was working on a checklist of the British fauna which he published as A Catalogue of British Coleoptera, 1863, and on the British species of Helophorus, about which he wrote in Zool., 21, 1863, p.8610. The Catalogue contained the names of a great many species not previously recorded as British, and differed considerably in its arrangement and nomenclature from earlier catalogues, particularly in so far as it introduced the work of Continental authors. It was the first of a number of publications in which Crotch showed his wide knowledge of the literature, particularly the historic literature of entomology for which he was much respected by his contemporaries. In the following year Crotch made the first of a number of trips abroad specifically to collect Coleoptera, visiting the Canary Islands with his brother William Duppa (see below) where they were so successful that they were able to add no less than seventy seven species to Wollaston's earlier list. This trip was followed in 1865 and 1870 by visits to Spain, the first in company with several members of the Entomological Society of France. The publications listed above were followed by more than sixty further separately published papers and articles, the most important of which are: Catalogue of British Coleoptera, second edition, 1866; List of all the Coleoptera of the families Cicindelidae, Carabidae and Dytiscidae described AD. 1758-1821 referred to their modern genera, 1871; Synopsis Coleopterorum Europae et confinium anno 1868 descriptorum, 1871; List of Coccinellidae, 1871; Checklist of the Coleoptera of America north of Mexico, 1873; A revision of the coleopterous family Coccinellidae, 1874; and A revision of the coleopterous family Erotylidae (first published in Cistula Entomologica, 1, part XLVI, 1876, pp.377-572, but printed separately by Cambridge University Press in 1901). Crotch amassed considerable collections both in England and during his travels. In his will, made before he left for the United States, he bequeathed his collections of European Coleoptera (152 store boxes) and worldwide Coccinellidae and Erotylidae to the Zoological Museum in Cambridge, England. The last two are maintained separately but the first was incorporated into the main collection in 1945 after 100 specimens had been transferred to the Newbery collection in 1934. Crotch also gave other insects, including: Diptera and Hymenoptera from Weston-super-Mare; Trichoptera from Cambridge; and Coleoptera from Asturias in N. Spain (120 specimens), Greece and Smyrna (50 specimens), Natal (107 specimens collected by Miss Colenso), and the collections of T.V.Wollaston and E.W.Janson which he had purchased. Another collection of Coccinellidae was acquired by the NHM and is the subject of a published catalogue by R.D.Gordon (BM(NH) occasional paper, 1987). Crotch also gave insects to Charles Darwin, see Smith, K.G.V., ‘Darwin’s Insects, Charles Darwin’s entomological notes’, Bulletin (BM(NH), Historical series, 14(1), 1987, pp.1-143. Crotch gave a number of manuscript journals, etc. to the Cambridge University Museum in 1871. These include: a volume entitled Coccinellidae received or communication; a yearly bibliography titled Philhydrida Europae chronologice disposita auch G.R.Crotch ... 1838 - 1867; a Canary Islands Collecting Journal covering the period 28 April to 22 August 1864; and a fattish volume of letters, lists, etc. mainly relating to localities of his British Coleoptera and to certain rare specimens in the collection, but also including notes about the collections of E.W.Janson and T.V.Wollaston. Many of these notes were added by Hugh Scott and explain how to tell the Wollaston and Janson material from Crotch's specimens (useful because Crotch re-mounted many of their specimens on to his own cards). There are also beetles collected by Crotch in the P.B.Mason, C.Dupre, C.G.Hall and J.K.Taylor Collections at Bolton Museum, and he was also a major contributor to the C.G.Hall collection at Oldham Museum (specimens dated 1841-1874. Some from Monks Wood and Ireland. I am grateful to Simon Hayhow for this information). His Azores collection was presented by Godman to the NHM in 1871. Chalmers-Hunt (1976) records that a number of Crotch's British Coleoptera duplicates were sold by Stevens on 16 May 1899. Crotch's American collections are housed in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, Cambridge, U.S.A. where the material has been incorporated into the general collection. There are also Crotch specimens in the Leconte Collection at this institution. Smart and Wager (see below) quote a letter from J.F.Lawrence about this material as follows: 'There are Crotch types scattered throughout the collection, but some are not well marked and have not been catalogued. Certain specimens in the LeConte Collection are labelled as Crotch types (LeConte underlined the author's name in these cases), but in other cases it has been impossible to ascertain just which specimen in a series is actually the type, or whether it is here at all. Assuming that most of the North American species described by Crotch ended up here, we might have as many as 150 types, but at the present time it is not possible to get an exact figure'. Gilbert (1977) lists ten obituary and other notices, the most important of which are probably: Ent., 7, 1874, pp.236-240 (by Edward Newman); EMM., 11, 1874, 70-72, and H.Edwards, 'A Tribute to the Memory of George Robert Crotch', Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 5, 1875, 332-334. Agassiz, A History of Entomology, 1931, 598-600, includes a photographic portrait of Crotch (with an enormous beard!) and a list of some of the more important beetles he described. Since the publication of Gilbert's book, John Smart and Barbara Wager have published 'George Robert Crotch, 1842-1874: a bibliography with a biographical note' in J.Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist.,8(3), 1977, 244-248. Their list of Crotch's publications includes 67 items. Correspodence with J.C.Dale from Cambridge dated 1870 is in the RESL (Pederson 2002). (MD 4/02)