44 PROCEEDIXOS OF THE 



his father on the latter's numerous botanical tours; and in that 

 way, not only visited many parts of England, but learnt to know 

 at sight almost any British plant. On leaving school he passed 

 some time under the care of the Eev. William Guille, at that 

 time vicar of Egham, and afterwards Dean of Gruernsey ; but in 

 January 1835 he entered into residence at Peterhouse in the 

 University of Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1839 and 

 M.A. in 1842. Passionately addicted to field-sports, and to shoot- 

 ing especially, he, during his College career, assiduously went on 

 witli a collection of British Birds which he had begun as a mere 

 child, and the comparatively undrained condition of the Pen- 

 country in those days enabled him to procure many additions to 

 it hardly attainable in later years, these being not only the spoils 

 of his own gun, but birds sent fi'om a distance to the Cambridge 

 market, which he regularly visited. In this way he was so 

 fortunate as to become possessed of one of the very last survivors 

 of the Euglish race of Bustards (Otis tarda), which, having been 

 killed, as he afterwards made out, by a poacher at Dersiugham 

 in Norfolk, on the 26th of January, 1837, was found exposed in 

 a stall at Cambridge four days afterwards. His ardour for 

 shooting, however, did not prevent him from cultivating the 

 society of the older members of the University, and especially of 

 those who had a ta>te for any branch of Natural History, many 

 of whom must have known his father by reputation if not per- 

 sonall_v, and among them the late Charles Cardale Babingtou 

 (subsequently Professor of Botany), who had been a not in- 

 frequent visitor to Heufield, while Borrer's intercourse with his 

 seniors was no doubt rendered more easy by his position as a 

 fellow-commoner of his College, and his being some years older 

 than undergraduates ordinarily are. On the foundation, in 1837, 

 of the Pay Club he became one of its twelve original members, 

 all of whom he outlived, dying the senior member of that small 

 body of men to whose early exertions is due so much of that 

 proficiency in Natural Science which has since distinguished 

 Cambridge*. Several of his vacations he spent in travelling, for 

 in that respect he inherited his father's predilections, and thus 

 he made two tours in Wales, beside visiting the Channel Islands 

 and Scotland. One of his excursions was indeed of a novel kind. 

 He and a friend, William Walsh (afterwards rector of Great 

 Cotes in Lincolnshire), formed the design of walking round Grreat 

 Britain, keeping as closely as possible to the shore, or at least 

 within sight of the sea. Setting out from Worthing in Sussex, 

 they worked westward and northward so far as some place ia 

 Cromartyshire, whence, finding their time running short, they 

 struck across to the East coast, and pursued their way southward 

 till they reached the Wash. Arrived here Walsh was summoned 

 home, and the rest of the journey had to be abandoned. They 



* The only other undergraduate original member was the late well-known 

 Mr. John Ball, then of Christ's College. 



