5 9 A Obituary. 



logist/ and he continued to do so while at Christ Churchy 

 Oxford, as well as during his vacations, while it is hardly 

 necessary to say that his subsequent letters and articles in 

 that and other periodicals only ceased with his life. His 

 first communication to ' The Ibis ' was in 1 860, on the 

 birds observed in the Ionian Islands and on the coast of 

 Albania, &c., in the years 1857 and 1858 : a very breezy, 

 pleasant series of articles, with just the flavour of sport about 

 the natural history that a new publication wanted. To these 

 succeeded — in 1865 and 1866 — some charming" notes on 

 Spain, which Lord Lilford had visited in 1856 and again in 

 1864. He was so delighted with the country that he not 

 only returned in 1869, but devoted himself to working up 

 the ornithology of the southern portion, and that he did not 

 write about his experiences in the marismas of the Guadal- 

 quivir was probably due to his delicate aversion for anything 

 like trespassing upon ground worked by others. His liking 

 for everything Spanish led him to learn that language ; but his 

 natural aptitude for such study must have been considerable, 

 for in 1869, when the writer had the pleasure of making his 

 personal acquaintance in Seville, he spoke Castilian admirably, 

 and also its dialects with a raciness acquired by few English- 

 men. In 1873 and 1874, Lord Lilford, already somewhat 

 crippled by the rheumatic gout to which he had long been 

 subject, and to which he subsequently became a martyr, 

 visited the Italian shores of the Mediterranean in the yacht 

 ' Ti&rdi' and on that excursion he re-discovered that rare Gull, 

 Larus audouini, of which no one had seen a fresh specimen for 

 many a year. In 1875 portions of Cyprus Avere visited, as will 

 be mentioned hereafter. In the same yacht, in the spring of 

 1876, he visited Santander and the neighbouring parts of 

 north-western Spain ; but it fell to the lot of his friend, 

 Lt.-Col. Irby, to give an account of the avifauna of this 

 district (Ibis, 1883, p. 173). In the early part of 1882 the 

 Mediterranean again attracted his attention, and another 

 haunt of Audouin^s Gull was explored — not to mention a 

 previous discovery of it on an islet which was not named 

 in print, though an open secret for the discreet. But these 

 voyages had to be abandoned at last, and the personal 



