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BOYD ALEXANDER. 



[Plate L] 



All ornithologists will have received with unfeigned 

 regret the news of the tragic death in the heart of Africa 

 of Lieutenant Boyd Alexander. He was on a journey 

 which, had it been accomplished, would have made him 

 still more famous as one of the most intrepid and successful 

 of explorers. Few details are to hand, but he appears 

 to have been murdered on April 2nd, 1910, by hostile 

 natives while endeavouring to pass through their territory 

 to the north-west of Abeshr in the Wadai. 



Boyd Alexander was without doubt a born naturalist, 

 and had he not found a wider scope for his talents he 

 would soon have made a name for himself amongst those 

 who study specially the birds of this country. \^Tiat 

 British ornithology has lost, the science at large has gained, 

 and although students of British birds must in a way 

 regret that one with such natural gifts of observation 

 and such a talent for committing these observations in 

 an accurate and interesting manner to paper, should have 

 so early abandoned this branch of study, it must ever 

 be a source of satisfaction that the early training m the 

 field of British ornithology should have led to those 

 really remarkable results which Boyd Alexander achieved 

 in the wider field of work to which he was called. 



At an early age Boyd Alexander commenced to study 

 and collect the birds in his own neighbourhood of Cran- 

 brook. Indeed, at the age of ten, he was consistently 

 keeping a naturahst's diary, and his boyhood friends 

 recall the fact that when he was about eleven a bad 

 attack of rheumatism, which stopped his playing cricket 

 for a term, did not prevent his chmbing trees, and the 

 numbers of eggs and other natural history objects which 

 he amassed during this term put his schoolboy rivals for 

 ever behind in the race of collecting. He soon extended 

 his researches to the neighbourhood of Romney Marsh, 

 and quickly added to his collection of local rarities. It 



