80 WHITE— A Sketch of the Life of Samuel White. 



250 yards of calico, mostly coloured, hundreds of dozens of 

 handkerchiefs, several hundreds of tomahawks, seventy dozen 

 knives, 100 lbs. of beads, 10 cwt. of tobacco, twenty' double 

 barrel guns, 40 single barrel guns, 200 lbs. of powder, 20 bags 

 of shot, 2,000 caps, ten dozen rugs, also tea, sugar, rice 

 biscuits, and many other things besides 100 sovereigns. It 

 can be well understood that some of these men said, 'Such 

 times they had never seen before' -'. 



It is greatly to be regretted that this great field Ornitho- 

 logist should have left us before he had put into vrriting his 

 great achievements in the science he loved so much, and for 

 which he suffered so many hardships — hardshi]v3 which event- 

 ually cost him his life. He was a man of sudi retiring nature 

 that he avoided any notoriety that would be likely to follow 

 many of his great achievements and made as little as possible 

 of his work, but I know that he realized that he had much im- 

 formation which would be valuable to science, and I also 

 know that if he had been spared, it was his intention to record 

 much of his field work that it might be handed down to live 

 after him. The subject of this brief sketch lived in those early 

 days of a young colony when the wonderful pioneers required 

 all the grit that a human being can possess.to make headway 

 against those manifold difKiculties which are always associated 

 with pioneering. Consequently, my father's early tastes for 

 natural history were much retarded, and in addition his 

 parents, who did not realize the importance of their son's 

 scientific research kept a check upon his hobby. 

 In spite of all the obstacles thrown in his 

 way Samuel White from his early childhood showed the great- 

 est love for nature, especially birds, and during his boyhood 

 days spent in a veritable bird paradise, at his old home at the 

 Reedbeds. bird observation was always first in his mind. It 

 was then he laid down the nucleus of a great collection and 

 at the time of his death and long after, the earliest specimens 

 collected were in a perfect state of preservation. Sad to say 

 this great collection containing birds, which have now become 

 extinct was scattered by the trustees to the four quarters of 

 the Globe, a priceless collection which could never be assem- 

 bled again, and this w^as done, of course against his express 

 wishes and will. The great love for nature possessed by 

 my father may have caused some w^ho did not really know 

 him, to think that he was eccentric ; for instance he Avilled, 

 that should he lose his life w^hen upon one of his expeditions 

 into the interior, no search should be made for his remains, 



