386 Obituary. 



Chester College, which he entered at the early age of eleven. 

 On leaving Winchester in 1872, Forbes passed a year at 

 Aix-la-Chapelle studying German, and then became a student 

 of the University of Edinburgh, where he pursued the regular 

 medical course, paying special attention to zoology and 

 botany, and commencing collections of insects and plants. 

 In 1875 Forbes transferred his residence to London, and 

 entered himself as a student of University College, with the 

 idea of taking a medical degree in the metropolis. Here he 

 became quickly intimate with other zoologists, who were very 

 soon attracted by the astounding general knowledge of zoology 

 and the acute intelligence o£ one so young. By the advice 

 of the late Prof. Garrod and other friends Mr. Forbes was 

 induced in October 1876 to leave London and to become an 

 undergraduate of St. John^s College, Cambridge, where he 

 was subsequently elected Scholar and took his B.A. degree 

 with a First Class in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1879. 

 The post of Prosector to the Zoological Society of London 

 having become vacant in October 1879 by the lamented 

 death of Prof. Garrod, Mr. Forbes was appointed [omnium 

 consensu) to that office in the January following. Lideed he 

 had been designated by Garrod on his deathbed as his 

 most obvious and proper successor, and appointed his literary 

 executor. 



Mr. Forbes entered upon the duties of his office with cha- 

 racteristic energy ; and during the three following sessions of 

 the Zoological Society brought before the scientific meetings 

 a scries of most interesting and valuable communications 

 derived from his studies of the animals that came under his 

 examination. He had a happy knack of putting forward 

 abstruse points of anatomy in an understandable form ; and 

 especially directed himself to the investigation of the muscular 

 structure and voice-organs of birds, in continuation of the 

 researches of his predecessor Garrod on the same subjects. 



In the summer of 1880 Mr. Forbes made a short excursion 

 to the forests of Pernambuco, Brazil, of which he published 

 an account in this Journal for 1 881; and in the following year 

 passed his holiday in the Ignited States, in order to make the 



