Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Obituary - editorial
Died 16 February, 1946.
Mr James Andrew Kershaw, FRES, CMZS, has been known in Australian
natural history for more than half
a century. It it difficult to say at this
stage which of his several important fields of activity will be most
- vividly remembered, for he gave distinguished service to them all.
Mr Kershaw was a field zoologist
of the older school when it was possible for one man to undertake many
lines of inquiry and make significant
contributions to each — the days before the specialist. Thus his contributions to the natural history of Victoria encompassed such widely varying fields as butterflies, shellfish, and
the breeding of the platypus. For
almost half a century he was a member of the staff of the National
Museum, Melbourne, of which he
was Director in succession to Sir
Baldwin Spencer from 1929 to his
retirement in 1931. Also, he played
a leading part in the activities and
management of the various learned
societies concerned with natural history; and he was one of the prime
movers in the reservation of Wilson’s Promontory as a National Park,
and was secretary of the trustees of
the park from its inception in 1908
until his death.
It might almost have been said
that Mr. Kershaw was born into
natural history and the Museum service - his father, William Kershaw,
became Zoologist to the Museum in
1856, two years after its foundation,
and served it under Sir Frederick
McCoy for 35 years. The son, James,
joined his father on the staff as
museum assistant in 1883, at the age
of 17 years, after an education at
the Alma Road State School and the
long since defunct East St. Kilda
Grammar School. His early training
was in entomology, but later he gained a wide technical training in
general zoology and in museum administration. In 1891 he succeeded
his father as Curator of the Zoological Section, and on the death of
Sir Frederick McCoy in 1899 he was
appointed Curator of the Museum,
a post he held until, on the resignation of Sir Baldwin Spencer, he was
appointed Director.
As a mark of esteem, on his retirement from the service in April,
1931, he was appointed an Honorary
Scientific Worker in Zoology, and,
far from regarding this as a token appointment, he worked steadily on
zoological problems up to the day of
his sudden death. He was engaged
upon a reclassification of his own
and the museum's collection of mollusca, and was also preparing a catalogue of the fishes of Australia.
Outside the Museum, Mr. Kershaw
fostered a love of nature in the community by every means available to
him. As early as 1883 he had attended meetings of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, and he became
a member in March, 1888. For more
than 30 years he was a member of
the committee, and served as honorary secretary from 1901 to 1903, and
again from 1906 to 1908; he was president in 1913-15 and again in 1931-33.
Becoming a member of the Royal
Society of Victoria in 1900, he was
elected to the council in 1902, and
was president in 1918-19. He acted
as honorary secretary from 1920 to
1923, and had been a trustee of the
society’s property since 1922.
He was also prominent in the early
affairs of the Royal Australasian
Ornithologists’ Union, and took part
in the famous Bass Strait Islands
expedition of the union in 1908. His
other travels in search of biological
information and zoological material
took him to Queensland ffor five
months with the late Dr. MacGillivray, and to Ooldea, Central Australia, as well as to most of the re-
mote parts of his native State, Victoria. His various descriptive papers
will be found in the Victorian Naturalist, the Emu, and the Memoirs of
the National Museum, Melbourne.
Mr. Kershaw was a helpful, kindly
man to all who displayed a serious
interest in the subjects to which he
devoted his life and, withal, a gifted
and successful administrator. He
married, in 1886, Miss Elsie Charlotte
Brown, who died some years ago. He
leaves three sons, to whom our sympathy is extended.
Source: Extracted from: WILD LIFE April 1946 p.133
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: WILD LIFE April 1946 p.133.
Data from 68 specimens