xxxvi Annual Report of the Council. 



Richard Bowdler Sharpe, LL.D., F.L.S., F.Z.S., an 

 honorary member of this Society, died at his home in Chiswick, 

 on Christmas Day, 1909, at the age of 62 years, after a brief 

 illness, from pneumonia. 



He was born in London, November 22nd, 1847, the eldest 

 son of Thomas Bowdler Sharpe, a well-known publisher in 

 London, and grandson of the Rev. Lancelot Sharpe, Rector of 

 All Hallows, Staining, London, and for many years headmaster 

 of St. Saviour's Grammar School, Southwark. At the age of 

 sixteen he took a clerkship in the establishment of W. H. Smith 

 and Son, and two years later entered the employment of 

 B. Quaritch, the eminent publisher and bookseller. At the age 

 of nineteen he was appointed Librarian to the Zoological Society, 

 which ofifice he held for five years, when in 1872 he accepted 

 the post of Senior Assistant to the Department of Zoology at the 

 British Museum, vacant by the death of that eminent ornithologist, 

 George Robert Gray: In November, 1895, he was promoted to 

 be Assistant-Keeper in charge of the Veitebrate section of the 

 Zoological Department, which position he held till his decease. 

 After taking up his ofificial duties as head of the Ornithological 

 Department of the British Museum his ability was so quickly 

 appreciated that he was entrusted with the preparation of the first 

 volume of the " British Museum Catalogue of Birds" published in 

 1874, which gigantic work (8vo., 27 vols., 1874-1898), the most 

 exhaustive undertaking of the kind in existence, employed the 

 chief part of his time and energies, apart from the official routine 

 of his curatorship, for a quarter of a century. The Catalogue 

 embraces not only a list of the specimens contained in the 

 Museum itself, but it gives a full description of every bird known 

 in the world at the time of publication, whether in the Museum 

 or in any other collection ; its changes of plumage and the 

 literature referring to its history and determination, together 

 with a brief record of the geographical range of each species, 

 and an enumeration of the specimens in the British Museum. 

 The stupendous character of the task may be realised, and it 

 says much for the extraordinary industry and power of work 



