^°'i^lO^"] Allen, Richard Bowdler Sharpe. 125 



in 1872, he accepted the post of Senior Assistant in the Department 

 of Zoolofjy at the British Museum, made vacant by the death of 

 that eminent ornithologist, George Robert Gray, which position 

 he held till his decease, having been promoted in November, 1895, 

 to be Assistant-Keeper in charge of the Vertebrate section of the 

 Zoological Department. 



Sharpe early gave evidence of a strong love of natural history, 

 especially of birds and insects, and his ornithological work had 

 begun in earnest at the time he accepted his first clerkship in Lon- 

 don, at which time, we are told,^ "he was devoting every moment 

 of his spare time to the study of birds, with the determination to 

 earn his living as an ornithologist." His first published Mork was 

 his 'Monograph of the Alcedinidse, or Family of Kingfishers,' begun 

 when he was seventeen years of age and finished when he was 

 twenty-two, a cjuarto volume of nearly 400 pages, with 121 colored 

 plates. On the completion of this great work he began in 1871, 

 in cooperation Avith Mr. H. E. Dresser, 'A History of the Birds of 

 Europe' (4to, with colored plates), but the following year he was 

 obliged to abandon this undertaking, completed later so success- 

 fully by his colleague, to take up his official duties as head of the 

 Ornithological Department of the British INIuseum. 



Here his ability Avas so quickly appreciated that he was soon 

 entrusted with the preparation of the first volume of the 'British 

 Museum Catalogue of Birds,' published in 1874, which gigantic 

 work (8vo, 27 vols., 1874-1898) employed the chief part of his 

 time and energies, apart from the official routine of his curatorship, 

 for a quarter of a century, to be followed immediately by his 'Hand- 

 list of the Genera and Species of Birds' (8vo, 5 vols., 1899-1909.)' 

 Of the 'Catalogue' he prepared personally volumes I-IV, VI, VII, 

 X, XII, XIII, XXIII, and XXIV, and parts of volumes XVII and 



1 This notice is based on the biographical sketch of Dr. Sharpe published in ' British 

 Birds' for February, 1910 (Vol. Ill, pages 273-288, with portrait), by Mr. C. E. 

 Fagan, and on that of Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant in the 'Bulletin' of the British 

 Ornithologists' Club (Vol. XXV, Feb. 1910, pp. 43-49, also with portrait and a 

 bibliography by Mr. C. Chubb, pp. 49-70), from which nearly all of the facts here 

 given relating to his personal history are derived, chiefly from Mr. Fagan's paper, 

 this notice having been written before Mr. Grant's was received. 



2 For recent reviews of the 'Handlist' by the present writer see this journal. Vol. 

 XXVII, Jan. 1910, pp. 93-95, and 'Science,' N. S., Vol. XXXI, No. 790, pp. 265- 

 267, February 18, 1910. 



