Obituary. 619 



there is no doubt that he would have made his mark as an 

 observer. Mr. A, H. Evans writes : — " He was one o£ the 

 two leading spirits in ornithology during the time he was in 

 Cambridge, and did a great deal of work in the neighbour- 

 hood, chiefly in estimating the number of each species of 

 bird in the various districts and finding out in which spots 

 they bred. He kept careful lists of the results, and his work 



was most accurate He added a good deal to our 



knowledge of the birds of remote villages to the west of 

 Cambridge." G. A. M. 



Richard Lydekker. 



It is with great regret that we record the death of Mr. R. 

 Lydekker, F.R.S., which took place at Harpenden, Herts, 

 on April 16 last. Though never a member of the Union, 

 Mr. Lydekker has been a most active worker for over thirty 

 years in the services of zoology and palseontology. 



Born in 1849 of Dutch descent, he was educated at Cam- 

 bridge, where he took the second place in the first class of 

 the Natural Science tripos of 1871. Joining the Geological 

 Survey of India in 187-4, he remained eight years in India, 

 exploring Kashmir, and arranging and cataloguing the large 

 series of vertebrate tertiary fossils obtained by the Survey 

 chiefly in the Siwalik beds ; these had then been recently 

 transferred to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. 



Soon after his return to this country he became a regular 

 worker in the Natural History Museum, with which institu- 

 tion he remained connected for the rest of his life, though 

 he never sought an official appointment. 



Mr. Lydekker^s work in zoology naturally falls into two 

 categories — his researches in vertebrate palseontology and 

 his more popular books written chiefly for sportsmen and 

 from the sporting point of view ; these last are mostly con- 

 cerned with the larger Mammals. He also co-operated with 

 Sir William Flower in 'An Introduction to the Study of 

 Mammals,' an admirable work, and contributed the volume 

 on vertebrates to the third edition of Nicholson's ' Manual 

 of Palseontology.'' 



SER. X. VOL. III. 2 T 



