Obituary. 355 



other works of importance, as well as sections or parts of 

 general works that were then in progress. Thus in 1875 

 appeared his section on " Birds " which formed part of the 

 Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.Ss. ' Erebus' and 'Terror/ 

 under the command of Capt. Sir James Clark Ross, R.N., and 

 his treatise on the class Aves in ' Cassell's Natural History/ 

 which was edited, in six volumes, by Professor P. Martin 

 Duncan. Then came his Monograph on the Swallows, 

 commenced with C. W. Wyatt in 1885. Between 1875 

 and 1888, after the death of John Gould, extraordinary as it 

 may appear, he actually found time to complete the beautiful 

 folio works which Gould had left unfinished, such as ' The 

 Birds of Asia/ 'The Birds of New Guinea/ and the Mono- 

 graphs on the Trogons, the Humming Birds, and the Pittas 

 or Ground Thrushes — all admirably worked out on the lines 

 indicated by Gould. Similarly in the case of Seebohm's 

 'British Birds' Eggs/ the plates of which had been prepared 

 but the text was unwritten at the time of Seebohm's death in 

 November 1895, Sharpe came to the rescue and completed 

 the work, which was published in 1896. This was, perhaps, 

 the least satisfactory of all his publications ; for, in the first 

 place, he was handicapped by the fact (as stated in the 

 Preface) that Seebohm " had planned out and settled the 

 order of the plates," with the result that he had to adopt a 

 most confusing classification which he could not approve ; 

 and, in the next place, he himself had not paid such close 

 attention to British Oology as would enable him to do 

 justice to the subject. The coloured plates are for the most 

 part excellent, but the text was not up-to-date, even at the 

 time it was written. 



For several years, as recorder of the Class Aves, Sharpe 

 undertook and accomplished an extraordinary amount of 

 work for the ' Zoological Record/ which earned for him the 

 universal appreciation and gratitude of ornithologists. Of 

 his more popular publications mention should be made of 

 the four small octavo volumes on ' British Birds ' which he 

 contributed to Allen's ' Naturalist's Library ' (1894-97), and 

 his ' Sketch-Book of British Birds/ with coloured figures in 

 the text, published in 1898 by the S. P. C. K. In the same 



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