XOriCES OF ESSEX ORNITHOLOGISTS. 19 



(34. 4429), the month before his death, and consisted of some 

 lengthy and valuable " Critical Notices " on Mr. Hancock's Cataloirue 

 of the Birds of Northumberland and Durham. His diary, containing 

 his observations on birds, insects, &c., is stated {Entomologist, x.^ 

 p. 53) to be still in existence; but I have not been able to ascertain 

 its present whereabouts. 



He died on June 29, 1875, ^g<2d sixty-seven years all but two 

 days. I was present at his funeral, vvhich took place in the small, 

 secluded burial-ground adjoining the Friends' Meeting-house at 

 Epping. His almost unrivalled entomological collections, which, 

 during his lifetime, had attracted many a well-known entomologist to 

 the quiet town of Epping, were deposited after his death, in 

 P'ebruary, 1876, on loan by his executors in the Bethnal Green 

 branch of the South Kensington Museum, where they have ever 

 since been preserved intact and known as the *' Doubleday Col- 

 lections." In 1877, a catalogue of them {South Kensington Museum 

 Science Handbooks) was published by the Lords of the Committee of 

 Council on Education. It is to be regretted that the scientific 

 value of the collections is lessened by the absence of any indication 

 of localities attached to the specimens — a fault of nearly all old 

 collections. Obituary notices of Doubleday appeared in the En- 

 tomologist (x. p. 53 — with photograph), the Entomologists'' Mo?ifhly 

 Magazine (xii. p. 69), the Proceedings of the Entomological Society 

 (1875, P- x^^xi-) and the Field (^v\y 17, 1875). 



ENGLISH, James Lake (1820—1888), "was principally 

 known as a practical field-student of cryptogamic botany, and as a 

 lepidopterist ; but his knowledge of birds and skill as a taxidermist 

 entitle him to a place among Essex ornithologists. His father had 

 been a soldier in the Dragoon Guards, who settled in Epping as a 

 gardener, and in that quiet country-town English was born on August 

 2ist, 1820, in the cottage in which he lived nearly all his life. He 

 received some education at Palmer's School at Epping, but did not 

 shine as a scholar, his talents being of a mechanical and observational 

 character. He aided his father until the latter's death in 1836, and 

 then being thrown upon his own resources he collected insects for the 

 boys in the Friends' School at Epping. His skill attracted the notice 

 of Henry Doubleday, who engaged English as an assistant and col- 

 lector, in which he was highly successful, and great numbers of 

 Doubleday's specimens were the result of English's acuteness and per- 

 severance. He was also well skilled in the culture of plants and his 

 mechanical genius was undoubtedly great. He constructed a lathe 



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