1 92 1.] Obituarrj. 317 



XYlll.— Obituary. 



Robert Birkbeck. 



We cannot pass over in silence the death of one of the 

 original members of the Union, although lie severed his 

 connection with it so long ago as 1868. 



Robert Birkbeck, who died on 18 November last at the 

 age of 83 at his house, Kinloch Hourn, in Inverness-shire, 

 was born at Keswick in 1836, and was the fourth son of 

 William Birkbeck, of Keswick Old Hall, Norfolk. He 

 married in 1857 Mary Harriet, eldest daughter of the late 

 Sir John William Lubbock, Bt., and was therefore a 

 brother-in-law of the late Lord Avebury. He was also 

 an uncle by marriage of Mr. J. H. Gurney. He took 

 much interest in ornithology and was among the first to 

 join the ranks of the Union when it was projected in 1858, 

 though he resigned ten years later. He lived most of his 

 life on his estate on the west coast of Scotland, and devoted 

 himself to horticulture and tlie study and protection of some 

 of our rarer birds. 



A portrait of him as he appeared in his young days, with 

 a short notice, will be found in the Jubilee Supplement 

 volume of ' The Ibis ' for 1908. 



Charles Edward Fagan, C.B.E., I.S.O. 



Although not a member of the Union, Mr. Fagan, Secre- 

 tary to the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 

 whose death took place at his residence in West Ken- 

 sington on the 30th of January, was well known to a large 

 number of our members. In 1873, at the age of eighteen, 

 Mr. Fagan entered the British Museum, Bloomsbury, as 

 a second-class assistanr, and on the opening of the Natural 

 History Museum at South Kensington he was transferred 

 to the office of Professor (afterwards Sir William) Flower, 

 the newly-appointed director. In 1889 he became assistant 

 secretary, and when Sir Sidney Harmer was appointed 

 director in 1919 he was made secretary. 



