LINNEAN SOCIETY OP LONDON. 47 



We learn from Cunnington that Montagu always kept his 

 word, was always punctual, precise in his methods of work, punc- 

 tilious over questions of fact, and in industry indefatigable. Tliese 

 jots and tittles of evidence point straight to the conclusion that 

 the Father of English Ornithology was a good type of the average 

 man of science — accurate, conscientious, thick-tingered, laborious, 

 practical, excellent. Perhaps he was also pig-headed, irascible 

 and proud. Anyway, if the reader be tempted to dip into the 

 Ornithological Dictionary — and I heartily recommend the experi- 

 ment — he ^\■ill find therein revealed another characteristic which 

 easily falls into line with the rest and completes the picture for 

 us : the Colonel could not spell, and he struggled with the English 

 Syntax like a lion in a net ! The critics — oh ! serious critics ! — 

 taxed the old gentleman with writing " ossious," " curviture," 

 " delatable," and for such formidable English as, " With all these 

 reflections formed on the known laws of JVature, evinced by daily 

 experience, we can have no more doubt of the identity of these 

 two shrikes as distinct species than we have that they are different 

 from the Cinereous Shrike." 



Using the butt end of his pen, he repulsed the attack of his 

 critics by likening them to " assassins with hands continually 

 imbued in blood." Critics and assassins followed "congenial 

 trades," for " each stabs in the dark and are too frequently- 

 actuated by similar motives." 



Proficient in the use of the gun, pistol, and scalpel, the gallant 

 Colonel probably found the pen fiddling work, and after all, 

 love, marriage, and war at the age of nineteen scarcely form the 

 right psychological climate for acquiring a pure English style. 



There is no space to speak fully of Montagu's interesting dis- 

 coveries in marine zoology. He discovered several new fishes, 

 and added the beautiful Butterfly Blenny to the British list. In 

 the ' Testacea Britannica ' 470 molluscs are enumerated, upwards 

 of a hundred of which had not been described before, or else were 

 then for the first time ascertained to be British. 



Quite a tour de force in its way was his ' Spongia Britannica,' for 

 iu Montagu's time it was no easy matter to write a book on 

 British sponges, as next to nothing was known of their structure, 

 and systematic wi-iters therefore had to rely upon inadequate and 

 superficial characters for differentiating species. Montagu him- 

 self speaks of it as an " occult science," and it is very much to 

 his credit that succeeding authors have been unanimous in 

 regarding his sponge work as " good as far as it goes.'"' 



It is natural of course to compare him with his correspondent 

 and more famous contemporarj^ Gilbert White, the association 

 being more by contrast than similarity. Both were field-naturalists 

 who drew " the hidden treasures from their native sites." But 

 Montagu was an efficient zoologist who mentally photographed 

 and faithfully recorded phenomena in a series of memoirs to 

 learned Societies. White strolled in his garden or on Selborne 



