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JOHN ALEXANDER HARVIE-BROWN. 



(Plate 1.) 



The death of Dr. Harvie-Brown will cause a vacancy 

 in the ranks of Scottish naturalists which it will be 

 difficult, if not impossible to fill. Few Scotsmen knew 

 their native land better than he, and none have ever 

 before acquired such an extensive knowledge of its 

 Vertebrate Fauna. 



John Alexander Harvie-Brown was born on August 

 27th, 1844. He was the only son of John Harvie- 

 Brown, of Quarter and Shirgarton, who assumed the 

 name Brown by the will of John Brown of Quarter, and 

 Elizabeth Spottiswoode, his wife, the daughter and 

 heiress of Thomas Spottiswoode of Dunipace. He was 

 educated at Merchiston Castle, and Edinburgh and 

 Cambridge Universities. As a youth he was a good 

 football and cricket player, but from his earliest days 

 he was most remarkable for his enthusiasm in collecting 

 birds and birds' eggs, and he used to delight in telling 

 how a light-house keeper had happily interpreted his 

 initials as " John Always Himting Birds." He never 

 married and never followed a profession, but devoted 

 his life to natural history and he was also fond of 

 shooting and fishing. As a comparatively young man 

 he made several ornithological visits to Norway, Russia, 

 Finland and Transylvania, and perhaps his most im- 

 portant expedition was that to the lower reaches 

 of the River Petchora with Henry Seebohm in the 

 summer of 1875, when, amongst other achievements, 

 the eggs of the Grey Plover and the Little Stint were 

 discovered. He had a unique knowledge of the islands 

 off the Scottish coast, as for some years he made it a 

 practice each summer to cruise among them in his yacht 

 the " Shiantelle." The Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, 

 and the Faroes were all explored by him in this way, 

 and even lonely Rockall was visited in the Irish Fisheries' 



