ORIGIXAL MEMBERS. 95 



Mr. J. H. GURNEY. 



By the death of John Henry Gurney, on tlie 20th of 

 April, 1890, not only did the British Ornithologists' Union 

 lose one of its Founders, but '^The Ibis' one of its most 

 constant and munificent supporters. He was the only 

 son of Joseph John Gurney, of Earlham, in the county of 

 Norfolk (celebrated for the various phihiuthropic under- 

 takings to which he devoted the leisure of his life), and 

 was born on the 4th of July, 1819. At the age of ten 

 years he was sent to a private tutor, who lived iu Epping 

 Forest. Thence lie went to the Friends' School at Totten- 

 ham, and on leaving it, being then about seventeen years 

 old, entered the banking business at Norwich, in which his 

 family had long been so successfully engaged. His love of 

 natural history shewed itself very early, and the writer of 

 these lines was told by him of his getting into a serious 

 scrape at school for dissecting a bird on a mahogany desk, 

 which immediately afterwards revealed the secret of the use 

 to which it had been put as an operating-table, by the stains 

 ou the polished surface from the camphorated spirit (supplied 

 to the boys as a cure for colds, and the only antiseptic 

 liquid available) that he had employed to avert the possi- 

 bility of unpleasant odours from his " subject." 



During his school-days in Essex he made the acquaintance 

 of Mr. Henry Doubleday, of Epping, so long known for his 

 ornithological and entomological collections, and from him 

 obtained, in 1836, an introduction to the equally well-known 

 Mr. T. C. Hey sham, of Carlisle, Avith whom he kept up for 

 many years a correspondence, chiefly on zoological matters 

 — sending him from time to time birds, mostly obtained, iu 

 Norfolk ; for at this time Gurney had not begun a collection 

 of his own. That his generosity was then as great as it 

 continued to be in after years is shoAvn by his letters to 

 Heysham, which have fortunately been preserA^ed, and have 



