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THE LATE G. E. H. BARRETT-HAMILTOX. 



Gerald Edwix Hamilton Barrett-Hamilton, born 1871, 

 B.A. Cambridge 1894 (first-class in the Natural Science 

 Tripos in the same list with his friend Dr. E. A. Wilson), 

 Major 5th (Militia) Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, in which 

 he served during the South African Avar, Hon. Captain 

 in the Army, F.Z.S., M.R.I. A., though princix^ally known 

 as a mammalogist, was also an ornithologist, but as the 

 bulk of his contributions to ornithology appeared m the 

 pages of tlie Irish Naturalist, he was probably not so 

 well knoA^n to English ornithologists as he deserved to be. 

 Without attempting a complete list, there are communi- 

 cations on birds from him in the Ihis for 1895-97-98, 

 1900-02, and Bull. B.O.C., 1898 (LI. and LIIL), etc. His most 

 ^ndurmg memorial will be A History of British Mammals, 

 appearmg in parts, of A^-hich, unfortunately, not much more 

 than half is j^et published. 



In October last, accompanied by an assistant from the 

 Natural History Museum, South Kensington, he started to 

 South Georgia (the captain of the ship being an old 

 Norwegian whaling friend of the A\riter's of nearly thirty 

 years ago) on a mission from the Colonial Office, to investigate 

 and report on the wlialing, sealing, and " penguming " 

 carried on there, and also to investigate and report on, and 

 to form a collection of. the fauna of the island for the Natural 

 History Museum. After a passage of thirty-five days he 

 landed there, and found himself surrounded by several most 

 interesting species of birds and beasts. The weather he 

 described to the present writer as bright and sunny, alter- 

 nating with snow-storms. Each morning that a whale was 

 in he was down at the slip by 6 a.m., and he was liopmg 

 to leave on his long passage homewards towards the end 

 of February, but on January 17th he died, apparently almost 

 suddenly, from heart failure. It took a whaler a week to 

 reach the Falkland Islands, whence a cablegram, lacking 

 as usual all details, took another week to arrive at the 

 Colonial Office. His body is being brought home in the 

 whaler " Orwell " due at Liverpool about February 27th, 

 and will be taken on thence to his home in co. Wexford, 

 wliere his widow and six little children sadly await it. 



The necessity for the punctual publication of British 

 Birds is the reason for the brevity of this utterly inadequate 

 notice of a friend who deserved the very best that could 

 have been written. Alfred Heneage Cocks. 



