1 91 8.] Obituary. 155 



young Nortli was educated at the Public School and sub- 

 sequently at the Grammar School, Melbourne. He had 

 an inborn taste for ornithology, but was for some years 

 engaged in business in Melbourne, where he was one of 

 the original members of the Field Naturalists' Club. In 

 1878 he made the acquaintance of Ramsay, whom he only 

 survived by five months, and who was at that time the 

 Curator of the Australian Museum. A few years later he 

 joined Ramsay in Sydney, where he was employed to 

 arrange the Ramsay collection of birds and to prepare a 

 catalogue of the eggs of the Australian Museum. About 

 this time he was appointed assistant to the Curator, 

 Dr. Ramsay, and subsequently, in 1891, Ornithologist of 

 the Australian Museum, a post which he retained until 

 his death. 



The ornithological writings of Mr. North chiefly deal 

 with the life-history and habits of Australian birds, espe- 

 cially of those which occur in the immediate vicinity of 

 Sydney. His most important publication is undoubtedly 

 the 'Nests and Eggs of Birds found breeding in Australia 

 and Tasmania,^ published by the Trustees of the Australian 

 Museum at Sydney between the years 1901-1 91-A. The 

 work is in four quarto volumes and is a second edition, 

 though entirely re-written, of a previous work published, 

 in 1889. An idea of its scope and value will be gained 

 from the notice of the last part issued, to be found in 

 'The Ibis' for 1915 (p. 373). 



Mr. North also wrote an account of the birds of the 

 Horn Scientific Expedition in Central Australia, 1896, and 

 of the birds collected by the Calvert Exploring Expedition 

 in Western Australia, 1898. Many other contributions 

 from his pen have appeared in the publications of the 

 Australian Museum, the Proceedings of the Linnean Society 

 of New South Wales, and the 'Victorian Naturalist,' as well 

 as in ' The Ibis,' to which he sent several short papers from 

 1893 onwards. 



For his ornithological work Mr. North was elected a 

 Colonial Member of our Union in 1903, and he had the 



