26o TRIBUTES TO KNOWLEDGE, 



birds in August for sport, hats, and feminine folly, that 

 plays the mischief with our coast-breeding birds. Since 

 the Fame Islands Association has been started, a certain 

 number of eggs, the first layings of various species, are 

 taken and sold for the benefit of the boatmen and fisher- 

 men, with manifest advantage to the birds, who, if allowed 

 to increase without any check, would overcrowd the 

 islands, and, in all probability, degenerate in strength and 

 beauty." ' 



Himself President of the Northampton Field Natu- 

 ralists' Club, he encouraged and helped such local work 

 wherever centralised. He was invariably patient and kind 

 to ignorance, knowing well that men's leisure and oppor- 

 tunities are unequal. Get a love of nature into the heart 

 of the people, he would have said, and knowledge will 

 come in its turn. None the less, with his keen sense of 

 humour, an incident such as that described in the following 

 delightful letter would amuse him immensely : — 



^'July -^th, 1895. 

 " A small fruiterer at Peterborough wrote to me 

 saying that he had shot a strange hawk, and found on 

 enquiring from a friend that it was a ' humming 

 buzzard'* {sic\ and that I was an ammature oi birds, 

 so that he was sending to me. The bird arrived in due 



1 To G. Hope, Esq. 



* The Honey Buzzard {Fernis apivorus) is a migratory bird of 

 prey, now exceedingly rare as a nesting species in this country. 



