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MISCELLANEOUS. 



The late George Kobekt Gray. 



Since our last pubKcation, zoology, and ornithology in particular, 

 has sustained a severe loss by the death of George Robert Gray, 

 Assistant Keeper of Zoology in the British Museum, whom we have no 

 hesitation in pronouncing one of the most distinguished ornithologists 

 of the present day. He was the youngest son of Samuel Erederick 

 Gray, himself a distinguished chemist, pharmacologist, and na- 

 turalist, and brother of Dr. John Edward Gray, the present Head 

 Keeper of the Department of Zoology in the British Museum, so 

 well known and so eminently famed for his numerous zoological 

 and other labours. Born in July 1808, he was educated at Mer- 

 chant Tailors' School, in the City of London, and early in life 

 assisted the late Mr. Children in the arrangement of his extensive 

 collection of insects. In this congenial occupation he spent several 

 years, until 1831, when he became an Assistant in the Zoological 

 Department of the British Museum, of which Mr. Children was the 

 Keeper. He contributed greatly to the enlarged translation of 

 Cuvier's ' Animal Kingdom,' then in progress under the charge of 

 Mr. Griffith, and published various works on insects, the chief of 

 which was a revision of the Phasmidse — and at a later period gave 

 to the world a revision of some of the divisions of the Linnaean 

 genus Papilio, and an account of insects parasitical on other 

 insects and on plants, most elaborately worked out. In 1840 

 he printed privately a ' List of the Genera of Birds,' containing 

 1065 genera, and noting the type species on which each genus was 

 founded ; and in the following year he published a second edition 

 with additions and corrections, in which he extended the list to 

 1232 genera. The third edition of this work, entitled a ' List of 

 the Genera and Subgenera of Birds,' contains 2403 genera and 

 subgenera. The last of this set of " Lists " was a ' Hand-list of the 

 Genera and Species of Birds,' containing not only the generic and 

 subgeneric names, but also a comprehensive list of the species 

 belonging to each. Of these works it may be sufficient to say that 

 they were elaborated with the utmost care, that they are almost 

 . unequalled for the accuracy of their details, and that no ornitholo- 

 gist can possibly work without constant reference to them and to 

 the authorities on which they are founded and to which they refer. 



In 1844 he commenced, in connexion with the late David William 

 Mitchell, who undertook the illustration of the book, the publication 

 in numbers of a work entitled ' The Genera of Birds,' which he com- 

 pleted in 1849. In this work the genera figured amounted to about 

 SOO, selected from the larger list contained in his other works as 

 the most essential, and they were accompanied by descriptive cha- 

 racters and by an extensive list of species belonging to each genus. 

 It was on this list that the much more enlarged catalogue contained 

 in his ' Hand-list ' was chiefly founded, containing upwards of 

 11,000 species which the author considers authentic, and no less 

 than 40,000 references to specific names given by various authors. 



