BOYD ALEXANDER. 35 



is recollected of him that once when his host at a shoot 

 had put him as " heading" gun he was heard to fire only- 

 one shot, and on the keeper going to find out the reason 

 why, he was found coming back to his stand from another 

 direction, very content at having bagged a small bird that 

 he wanted. His first published note on British birds appeared 

 in the Zoologist for 1896, where he recorded and described 

 the first British example of Harcourt's Petrel (Oceanoc^roma 

 cas^ro), which was picked up near Littlestone on the Kent 

 coast on December 5th, 1895, and found its way into his 

 collection. During the spring and autumn of 1896 he 

 passed a great deal of his time on this coast-line, studying 

 the nesting-habits of the birds and their migrations. 

 The results of these observations were published in three 

 papers in the Zoologist of the same year under the titles 

 " Ornithological Notes from Romney Marsh and its 

 Neighbourhood " (p. 246). " Notes on Bu-ds in Kent " 

 (p. 344) and " Ornithological Notes from Rye " (p. 408). 

 Many of the notes are in diary form, made day by day 

 while in camp in the marshes and are specially valuable 

 as records of the movements that take place along that 

 much-favoured coast-line. In February of the following 

 year Boyd Alexander left on his first expedition to the 

 Cape Verde Islands, and from that date his time was so 

 fully occupied with his travels abroad and when at home 

 in working out the results, that he had little leisure in 

 which to pursue his earlier studies, but as opportunity 

 occurred he never failed to add to his collection of local 

 birds, and his interest in them was in nowise lessened by 

 his pursuit of greater thmgs. It was in the mtervals 

 between his earlier journeys that he found time to compile 

 his chief contribution to the ornithology of his county, 

 namely, the section on " Birds " in the Victoria History 

 of Kent. Although necessarily limited by exigencies of 

 space, this contribution reaches a higher standard than 

 most similar articles, and is specially valuable to the 

 county-historian in that it not only takes cognisance of the 

 work of previous authors, but is full of the writer's own 



