304 Letters, Extracts, Notices, l^c. 



Museum/ a work inferior to uone for couscientious treatment. 

 Besides this, he worked continuously at a series of paintings 

 to form a mouographical gallery of the Picid8e_, illustrating 

 every type in British and foreign museums^ and giving 

 coloured portraits of every variation in plumage. It was 

 only on February 20th that we saw him last at the Meeting 

 of the B. O. Club, full of justifiable pleasure at having com- 

 pleted his twelve years of hard work, and prepared for private 

 circulation the sixteen or seventeen stout volumes to which 

 this elaborately illustrated monograph will extend. He was 

 never strong; for years he had been an uncomplaining 

 martyr to asthma ; illness set in, and he died on March 1 9th. 

 A very quiet, unobtrusive man, generous almost to a fault, 

 chivalrous in the highest sense of the word, few men have 

 passed away so deeply and so deservedly mourned by those 

 who knew him best. 



We have just heard, with great regret, of the death of 

 Alexander Goodman More, M.B.O.U., formerly of the 

 Dublin Natural History Museum; also of the decease of 

 our Foreign Member George N. Lawrence, of New York, 

 a veteran ornithologist, full of age and honour. To do justice 

 to the merits of these Members we must defer their obituary 

 notices to our next number. 



News has also reached us of the sudden death of Mr. R. 

 Champley, of Scarborough, Yorks., a collector who was well 

 known in ornithological circles. He was the possessor of no 

 fewer than nine eggs of the Great Auk {Alca impennis) , and 

 at various times he contributed valuable information re- 

 specting the existing skins, eggs, and bones of this now 

 extinct bird. His name is constantly noted in Mr. Symington 

 Grieve's monograph. 



One of the last of the old race of North- Country naturalists 

 has passed away by the decease of Mr. Charles Murray 

 Adamson, of Jesmond, near Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was a 

 friend and contemporary of John Hancock, and the author 

 of ' Studies of Birds,' ' Scraps about Birds,' &c., delightfully 

 written. 



