Mr. William Richard Fereday was born in Staffordshire, England, in 1820, and was admitted a solicitor of the High Court of Chancery and an attorney of the Court of Queen's Bench in 1849. He practised his profession in Birmingham and afterwards in London, and was engaged investigating the titles to and completing purchases of lands for the London and North-Western and Midland Railway Companies for fifteen years prior to 1862, when he came out to Lyttelton by the ship “Queen of the Mersey.” After two years' residence with his brother, Mr. E. H. Fereday, a runholder, who then held the Oakley station on the Rakaia, he resumed his profession and was admitted a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 1864, and afterwards carried on practice in Colombo Street, Christchurch. From 1885 to 1888 inclusive, he held the office of vice-president of the Canterbury Law Society. He was also a Governor of Canterbury College from 1876 to 1897, when in pursuance of “The Canterbury College and the Canterbury Agricultural College Act 1896,” the old members retired. He was a president of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury and a member of the Council of the Canterbury Society of Arts. In early life he was a member of the Entomological Society of London and became a Fellow of that society on its obtaining a Royal Charter, lepidoptera being a branch of entomology to which he particularly gave his attention. A fine collection of English lepidoptera collected by himself in England was presented by him some years prior to his death, to the Canterbury Museum. He also made a large collection of the lepidoptera of New Zealand and the transactions of the New Zealand Institute contain many of his papers on that subject.