1 92 1.] obituary. 543 



named by Tristram after his travelling companion, and 

 obtained during their journey in Palestine; he was also 

 the original discoverer o£ Passer moabiticus, which was only 

 met with by the party on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, 

 and is still a scarce bird in collections. 



j. h. gurney. 



John Burroughs. 



John Burroughs, who died 29 March last, Avithin a few 

 days of his eighty-fourth birthday, was to America what 

 Gilbert White was to England. In natural history and in 

 literature Burroughs covered a wider field than White, but 

 both aroused in their readers an interest in the everyday 

 life of garden, fiekl, and forest about their homes. 



'Wake Robin,' Burroughs' first book, was published 

 about 1870, and his final work 'Accepting the Universe' 

 appeared in the last year of his life. In 1871 he made a 

 short visit to England, and the results of his observations 

 here are recorded in 'Winter Sunshine' under the heading 

 " An October Abroad." Some years later he made a longer 

 stay in this country and devoted a volume. ' Fresh Fields,' 

 to describing his impressions of England and its bird-life. 



Although in no sense a technical naturalist. Burroughs 

 was a careful and accurate observer, and his facility of 

 expression gave to his essays a literary quality which won 

 for him a much larger audience than is reached by the 

 purely scientific writer. For this reason he exerted a pro- 

 found influence in developing in America that interest iu 

 nature, and })articularly birds, which has been so potent a 

 factor in securing the passage and enforcement of laws 

 protecting wild life in that country. 



Mr. Burroughs was the leader in the movement against 

 what, in America, is called "nature faking," and, joined by 

 Mr. Roosevelt, he succeeded in bringing into disrepute that 

 class of writers who, sacrificing truth for gaiiij presented 

 fiction as fact and attributed to animals an intelligence they 

 are far from possessing. 



Mr. Burroughs won disciples not only by the power of 



