Obituary. 353 



offhand the particular part of the world from which it came, 

 and approximately the limits of its geographical distribu- 

 tion. In addition, he could point out its characteristic habits, 

 its affinities, and peculiarities of structure in such a way as 

 to astonish those who came to him for information. It was 

 this unrivalled knowledge, aided by an extensive acquaint- 

 ance with the literature of his subject, that especially 

 qualified him for the preparation of the great work of his 

 life, the British Museum ' Catalogue of Birds/ completed 

 in twenty-seven volumes, with several hundred coloured 

 plates. 



To appreciate how this came to be written we may glance 

 briefly at the events of his career which led up to it. 

 Eldest son of the late Thomas Bowdler Sharpe (whose 

 name was well known in the forties as the publisher of 

 'Sharpens London Magazine'), he was born in London on 

 the 22nd of November, 1847, and, after being educated 

 at Brighton, Peterborough (King's Scholar), and Lough- 

 borough Grammar Schools, entered the publishing house 

 of W. H. Smith and Son in 1863. In 1867, after a 

 year with the late Mr. Bernard Quaritch, he was appointed 

 Librarian to the Zoological Society of London, a post which 

 he occupied until 1872. With so good a zoological library at 

 his command, it was not surprising that his early taste for 

 natural history should have been fostered and developed, 

 and in the year 1871 he commenced to publish some of the 

 results of his studies in ornithology, which included a cata- 

 logue, extending to seventy-six octavo pages, of his private 

 collection of African birds, and a monograph (one of the 

 first of its kind) on that very attractive group of birds, the 

 Kingfishers. This was issued in quarto, with 121 beautifully 

 coloured plates by Keulemans, most of the figures being 

 of life size. If Sharpe had published no other work 

 than this it would have sufficed to establish his reputa- 

 tion as a scientific writer on birds ; but this was only the 

 beginuing of a long series of useful volumes which he was 

 destined to complete and give to the world in a form both 

 attractive and instructive. In that same year he cooperated 



SER. IX. VOL. IV. 2 A 



