288 LATER YEARS 



Secretary of Jamaica. He was created C.M.G. in 1875, 

 and K.C.M.G-. in 1887. Daring his service in Mauritius 

 he discovered no fewer than twenty-seven new species 

 of birds living in Madagascar, the Comoros, and Mas- 

 carene Islands, and he took an active part in the dis- 

 covery of remains of the Dodo, Solitaire, Aphanapteryx, 

 and other extinct birds of Mauritius and Rodriguez. 

 He retired in 1883 to a house at Lowestoft, whence he 

 often made visits to his brother at Cambridge. 



The loss is one from which I can never recover, and 

 it is one which has at once made me feel ten years 

 older. We had absolutely identical tastes and pursuits 

 throughout fifty years and more, though we were often 

 separated for years.* 



To say that he felt ten years older was no idle 

 phrase. His friends remarked a definite change in the 

 Professor, and thenceforward, though his age was only 

 sixty-eight, he seemed to have become suddenly, as 

 some men do, an old man. He was still, for several 

 years to come, a familiar figure in the streets of 

 Cambridge ; if the four-wheeled cab took him to the 

 Museums in the afternoon, he walked back to Magdalene 

 whenever it was fine. And that was a progress that 

 one will never forget ; the tall old man bent as he 

 was, he certainly stood six feet dressed in an old- 

 fashioned black tail-coat, light grey trousers, and black 

 stove-pipe hat, or in summer a high-crowned felt hat 

 of pale grey. White hair and whiskers and keen 

 bright eyes that seemed to be fixed on the horizon ; but 

 he was quick to see a greeting from a passer-by, and he 

 was amazingly dexterous in transferring a stick to the 

 other hand in order to salute a lady. He had a strong 

 dislike of the Cambridge tramcars, and objected to 



* Letter to G. E H. Barrett-Hamilton. June. 1897. 



