° i9i4 J Elliot, In Memoriam: Philip Lutley Sclater. 7 



gentle ways and pleasant face, the greatest animal draughtsman 

 and painter of any age, and Keulemans, happy in his skill for de- 

 lineating birds. I do not remember ever to have seen at those 

 meetings either John Edward or George Robert Gray, but the 

 former's physical disability which constrained him to move about 

 in a rolling chair was sufficient to explain his absence, but I know 

 of no reason why George Robert should not have been present, 

 nor did I ever see there, either Darwin or Wallace. It may have 

 been that as they lived out of London, it was not convenient for 

 them to come into town at night, but both those eminent men were 

 frequently in the library during the day and I have often been with 

 them on those occasions, Darwin seeking information on some par- 

 ticular subject he was then investigating, demanding facts not theo- 

 ries, for which he did not seem to have any particular use. 



Those were interesting meetings, and at times the discussions 

 were very lively, and those whose mental artillery was not of the 

 requisite weight had best keep away from the arena. 



That was a glorious company of eminent men, broad-minded and 

 far-seeing, whose field of labor was as wide as the world, untram- 

 melled by the artificial, oft changing boundaries of States, Princi- 

 palities or Powers. 



And where now are all those brilliant souls! They have passed 

 over the threshold of that shining portal, through which all the 

 living have seen at times many of those they loved and cherished, 

 vanish from tear dimmed eyes, for, of all those whose names I have 

 mentioned, but two remain with us today. Dresser and Godman 

 long passed the number of years allotted to men upon the earth. 

 The survivors of those meetings stand like lone columns, erect, 

 lifting their heads aloft on a wide deserted plain, surrounded on 

 every side by ruins, and when in thought I sweep aside the inter- 

 vening years and stand again in that once crowded room, and look 

 on row upon row of vacant chairs, which now no man can fill, the 

 heart yearns with a fervent longing for 



"A touch of a vanished hand 

 And the sound of a voice that is still." 



On the establishment of the Ibis in 1859, the members of the 

 British Ornithologists' Union, of which Sclater was a founder. 



