Obituary. 145 



car accident at Salzburg on September 4th, 1904, when 

 hardly 32 years old. From his boyhood Erlanger had been 

 an ardent student of bird-life. He began to collect the 

 birds of his native country when he was still at school, and 

 presented many specimens to the Senckenbergische Museum 

 at Frankfurt-a.-M. In this connexion he became fir^t known 

 to zoologists, for his donations were duly recorded in the 

 Reports of the Senckenbergische Gesellschaft and his name 

 was mentioned in the ' Catalogue of the Senckenbergian 

 Collection of Birds/ 



After having finished his studies, Erlanger went for a year 

 to Lausanne, and for another (1895) to Cambridge, where 

 he attended Natural Science lectures, and, after learning 

 Arabic at the Oriental Academy in Berlin, soon began to 

 travel. From Cambridge he visited Lundy Island, and it is 

 hardly saying too much when it is stated that he collected 

 birds wherever he went. In 1895 he was elected a member of 

 the B. O. U. In 1893-1894 he made a tour in Tunis, and 

 in 1896 started on his famous expedition to the Tunisian 

 Sahara, where he brought together the largest and best 

 collection of birds ever made during one expedition in that 

 country. This collection resulted in the remarkable contri- 

 butions to the Ornithology of Tunisia published in the 

 'Journal fur Ornithologie ' in 1898 and 1899, accompanied 

 by seventeen excellent plates. This work was so important 

 that it made its author at once famous throughout and beyond 

 the ornithological world. Some parts of it, like his ad- 

 mirable treatise on the Crested Larks, will ever rank among 

 the best articles written on the geographical forms of a group. 

 It is a rare event that an ornithological writer begins his 

 career with such a work. But Erlanger did not rest on his 

 laurels, for in the same year that his Tunisian work was 

 finished he set out on a more important expedition. On this 

 occasion he selected Tropical Africa for his field of work. 

 Together with Oscar Neumann, Dr. Ellenbeck, Mr. Holter- 

 miiller, and his excellent taxidermist and assistant Carl Hil- 

 gert, he started from Zeila on the Somali coast and travelled 



SER. VIII. — vol. v. L 



