ee Notes and News. i 95 
Mr. Browne was a born naturalist, and his mind was doubtless stimu- 
lated in his boyhood by the society of such men as Henry Thoreau, 
Channing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (who married Mr. Browne’s aunt), 
in Concord, and also by association with Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the 
discoverer of ether, who was his uncle. 
While in college, he was soon made a member of the Harvard Natural 
History Society, and its Curator of Ornithology, and quickly became 
distinguished among his fellows by his work in arranging the cabinets 
of specimens and by his literary communications at the meetings of the 
society. He became, moreover, at about this time a frequent visitor at 
the rooms of the Boston Natural History Society, then in Mason St., 
Boston. To their collection he made some valuable gifts of birds shot 
by himself. He wasalso a frequent attendant at the meetings of 
this society, of which Dr. C. T. Jackson was President. Here he 
came to know such men as Agassiz, Jeffries Wyman, Gould, Storer, 
Bryant, Cabot, and others, and saw many of the distinguished naturalists 
ot the time. Mr. Browne was also an early member of the Nuttall Orni- 
thological Club of Cambridge, and of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union. 
In 1850 (his junior year), his health compelled him to give up study 
for a time and he went to Labrador, where he collected many birds 
among others a fine ‘ Labrador’ or ‘ Black’ Gyrfalcon, which he presented 
to the Boston Natural History Society. This bird, little known at that 
time, was the first of the species to be placed in the society’s collection. 
It was largely through the influence of Mr. Browne that the first speci- 
men known to have been certainly taken in Massachusetts of the Glossy 
Ibis was given to this society in 1850. His neat article on this subject, 
published in ‘The Auk’ for April, 1887, p. 97, tells the whole story. Mr. 
Browne had in his collection a unique specimen, a little Black Rail, so 
far as known the first of that species taken in New England, and still 
rarely found there. It was picked up dead on Clark’s Island, Plymouth 
Harbor. 
In the early spring of 1851, Mr. B. went to Florida where he joined 
Prof. Agassiz’s party at Key West. He camped in the Everglades and 
upon the Miami River, and secured many, at that time, rare and valuable 
specimens. 
Mr. Browne was, in his college days, an enthusiastic sportsman, and 
loved a dog anda gun and a solitary tramp in the woods above every- 
thing; and this love continued to the end of his life. With the instinct of 
a true sportsman and naturalist he recognized and drew to him all those 
who shared his tastes. So scrupulously did he avoid observation that 
few but the true ornithologist and mammalogist, or the expert in conchol- 
ogy, were aware of his knowledge in these departments, and they knew 
him chiefly by correspondence. 
Throughout his college life he kept a diary which is especially rich in 
recounting his experiences as a hunter and collector. He gives a detailed 
