SPENCE, WILLIAM, an eminent entomologist, was born in 1783. In early life he was engaged in business at Hull, and it was here he contracted the taste for the study of insect life which led to his introduction to the Rev. William Kirby, and with whom he engaged in the production of one of the most popular works in the English language on the study of natural history. This work was An Introduction to Entomology, or Elements of the Natural History of Insects. The work was suggested originally by Spence in 1808, and the first volume of it appeared in 1815. The work was completed in 4 vols. in 1826, and has already gone through seven editions. The two entomologists exchanged specimens in 1805, and this gradually led to the warmest friendship between them. (See Kirby, William.) Spence, besides contributing his share to this great work on natural history, wrote besides various papers illustrative of insect life, for the Linnean Transactions, and for the Magazine of Natural History. He was for many years Fellow of the Royal, Linnean, and Entomological Societies. He sat in parliament at the beginning of the present century, and wrote a political pamphlet, which attracted a considerable degree of attention, on the independency of Great Britain on foreign nations. He died at his residence in London, where he had lived during the latter part of his life, on the 10th of January 1860.