9 6 



Notes and Neivs. [^ 



"It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable, or un- 

 reasonable, ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted 

 myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularization of science; to 

 the development and organization of scientific education ; to the endless 

 series of battles and skirmishes over evolution ; and to untiring opposition 

 to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as every- 

 where else, and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly 

 enemy of science. 



" In striving for the attainment of these objects, I have been but one 

 among many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not 

 remembered, as such." 



Mr. Henry Seebohm, an Honorary Member of the American Orni- 

 thologists' Union, died at his home in London, Nov. 26, 1895, after a 

 short illness, although he had been in weak health since an attack of 

 influenza some six months previously. According to a recent notice 

 in the London 'Times,' Mr. Seebohm •"came of an old Quaker family, 

 and was born at Bradford, in Yorkshire, where as a child he showed an 

 extraordinary love of natural history, and used to study every kind of 

 animal which was to be met with on his father's property. He was edu- 

 cated at the Friends' School at York, where his love of nature still showed 

 itself in the collections of ferns, birds, and their eggs, which he began to 

 make at the time. For many years afterwards he was immersed in busi- 

 ness at Sheffield, where he became very successful as a steel manufacturer ; 

 but all through his business struggles he never lost his attachment for 

 ornithology, and made short expeditions to various parts of Europe to 

 gain an original experience of the habits of birds for his ' History of 

 British Birds,' which he had in contemplation. In the course of these 

 studies he visited most of the countries of Europe, Greece, Asia Minor, 

 Russia, Norway. Denmark, Heligoland, many parts of Germany and 

 Austria, the Engadine, Holland, and parts of France. In company with 

 Mr. ]. A. Harvie-Brown he undertook, in the summer of 1 S 7 5 , his cele- 

 brated expedition to the valley of the Lower Petchora, in northern 

 Russia, in quest of the eggs of the Gray Plover and the Little Stint, both 

 of which they managed to fi-nd, though they did not succeed in discovering 

 the eggs of the Curlew Sandpiper. In 1877 he went alone to the valley of 

 the Yenisei, in Siberia, and again obtained important ornithological 

 results. On this occasion his ship was wrecked, and he built another, 

 which he named the 'Ibis,' and in which he successfully returned to 

 England by the North Cape." 



In addition to numerous important papers in various scientific journals. 

 Mr. Seebohm is the author of several monographs and faunal works of 

 high value, among which are his 'Catalogue of the Turdidse ' (1881), 

 forming Volume V of the British Museum Catalogue of Birds' ; • A His- 



Cf. Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, VII. pp. 99-104. 



