(Alay) 
OsBERT Savin, F.R.S., F.L.S., &c., was ‘the second and 
only surviving son of the distinguished architect, Mr. Anthony 
Salvin. Born at Finchley in 1835, he was educated at West- 
minster School, and later at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, of 
which he was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1897. He 
graduated in 1857, and immediately afterwards proceeded 
to Tunis and Algeria for the purposes of natural-history 
exploration, in company with Mr. W. H. Hudleston and Mr. 
(now Canon) Tristram. In the autumn of the same year he 
began his long and intimate connexion with Central-American 
natural history by visiting Guatemala, where he remained till 
the middle of 1858. In the following year he paid a second 
visit to Central America, and in 1861 he again revisited it 
in company with Mr. F. DuCane Godman, since that time 
his constant fellow-worker. After his marriage in 1865 he 
made one further journey to Central America in company 
with his wife. His attention was at this time more particu- 
larly directed to Ornithology, on which he became one of the 
leading British authorities. He was one of the founders of 
the Jéts, the third series of which he edited ; he was the 
author of the volumes on the Humming-birds and Petrels in 
the British Museum Catalogue of Birds; and from 1874 till 
1883, when on his father’s death he took up his residence at 
Hawksfold, near Haslemere, he filled the office of Strickland 
Curator at Cambridge, also publishing a catalogue of the 
Ornithological collection in his charge. 
As an entomologist, Osbert Salvin’s name will chiefly and 
always be remembered, in association with that of Mr. F. D. 
Godman, for the important part he took in the inception, 
preparation, and issue of that great work the Biologia Centrali- 
Americana, and more particularly for his joint authorship of 
that portion of it which monographed the extremely rich 
butterfly-fauna of the region between Mexico and Panama. 
All his work, whether ornithological or entomological, bore 
the stamp of thoroughness, and gave testimony to the great 
extent and exactness of his knowledge, no less than to his 
soundness of judgment. The latter quality was, indeed, a 
conspicuous feature of his character in all aspects, and caused 
him to be always in request on the Councils and Committees 
