24 THE BIRDS OF ESSEX. 



Sudbury in 1801. His early education was limited, and he was 

 by trade a draper, but his tastes and pursuits were of a useful 

 and refined character. The elevation of the working classes con- 

 stituted the chief aim of his life, and was the work to which he 

 devoted most of his leisure time, though he also took a great interest 

 in the welfare of the Mechanics' Institute, the British Schools, the 

 Hospital, the Museum, and other public institutions belonging to his 

 native town, where the whole of his life was spent. For many years, 

 too, he took a very warm interest in the study of natural history, 

 especially ornithology, and to these pursuits much of his attention 

 was directed. He was a very clever bird-stuffer, and was thus able 

 to form a large and valuable collection of British birds, which, at his 

 death, became the property of his nephew, Mr. John Grubb, of 

 Birmingham, and is now preserved in one of the rooms of the 

 Library adjoining the Friends' Meeting-house in that town. It 

 comprises about 250 specimens, preserved in separate cases, and 

 is still in excellent condition. It is much to be regretted that, 

 as the collection was made before the days of modern precise 

 ornithology, the locality, date, and sex have in no case been affixed 

 to the specimens, and the value of the collection is thereby greatly 

 lessened. Still, there is no doubt that the great majority of the 

 specimens were obtained in the immediate vicinity of Sudbury 

 — indeed, with the help of his List of Sudbury Birds it is not 

 difficult to arrive with fair certainty at an idea of the particulars 

 of some few of the specimens, as will be seen hereafter. 



This list (20), which is now very scarce, originally appeared in 

 Fiiicher''s Sudbury Magazine for the year 1838 (p. 126), and was after- 

 wards reprinted separately in the shape of a three-page quarto tract, 

 in double columns. It is simply signed " K," and enumerates 130 

 species, some of which were observed, but not obtained. The only 

 separate copy I know of was in the possession of the late Canon 

 Babington, to whom I was indebted for the loan of it and the know- 

 ledge of the work in which it originally appeared — knowledge which 

 that gentleman himself does not appear to have possessed when 

 he published his Bi?-ds of Suffolk (46. 6). Many extracts from the 

 list appear in the following pages. Some of these, of course, relate 

 to occurrences in Suffolk, but as Sudbury is only separated from 

 Essex by a narrow stream it seemed absurd to exclude these. 



Another publication of his was a paper On the Study of Natural 

 History, read at the Sudbury Mechanics' Institute, on March i6th, 

 1849, a^^d afterwards published by J. Wright, of Sudbury, price 4d. 

 It is a closely-printed octavo pamphlet of twenty-eight pages. There 



