COXTRIBUTORS TO THE FIRST SERIES OF ' THE IBIS.' 197 



Mr. E. L. LAYARD. 



Edgar Leopold Layard^ C.M.G., was elected an Ilouoran' 

 Member of the B. O. U. in 1860, and Avas therefore one of 

 our oldest as well as one of our most valued correspondents. 

 He was born at Florence on July 23rd, 1824_, and entered 

 the Civil Service of Ceylon Avhen twenty-two years of age ; 

 but after nine years his health gave way, and in 1855 he 

 accepted the invitation of the late Sir George Grey to a post 

 in the Civil Service at Cape Town. There he founded the 

 South-African Museum, and became its first curator; after 

 Avhich he accompanied Sir George Grey on a special mission 

 to New Zealand, and subsequently became judge and com- 

 missioner under the Slave Trade Treaties at the Cape. 

 Transferred to the Consular Service, he was for some years 

 at Para, at the mouth of the Amazons ; next he Mas sent to 

 Fiji, where he arranged the cession, and was decorated in 

 1875 ; he then resumed Consular Service at Noumea, New 

 Caledonia, and nltimately retired after forty-seven years' 

 hard work. Layard was not a producer of many books, and 

 his chief work in this line was ' The Birds of South Africa,' 

 published in 1867, of which a new and revised edition, with 

 the collaboration of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, made its ap- 

 pearance between 1875-84. It is rather by his many and 

 varied articles from 1854 almost to the time of his much- 

 regretted death that he will be remembered ; and a column 

 of closely-printed type in the General Subject-Index to 

 ' The Ibis ' testifies to his energy in our special subject. 

 Besides these, his bright and pleasant letters to ' The Field,' 

 under his own name or the pseudonym of ''Bos CafFer/' 

 were a source of much pleasure to the Ornithologists of his 

 generation. He died at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, on 

 January Ist^ 1900. 



