1 91 8.] Obituary. 305 



journal, the ' Ned. Tijdscliiift Dierkuude.' He returned 

 to Germany in 186J< to succeed Hartlaub as the Curator of 

 the Museum at Bremen. His monograph on the Parrots 

 appeared in 18G7, and is one oP the best pieces of syste- 

 matic work of that period. In the same year appeared his 

 ' Ornithology of Central Polynesia,' in which he collabo- 

 rated with Hartlaub. Three years later the same authors 

 published ' Die Vogel Ost-Afrikas/ which formed the 

 fourth volume of the account of the travels of Carl von 

 der Decken in East Africa and was issued as a memorial 

 to that ill-fated explorer. This work was the foundation of 

 our knowledge of the birds of East Africa and is well known 

 to all workers on African ornithology. 



About this time Finsch began to visit England, where he 

 was very well known to many of the ornithologists of the 

 mid-Victorian age. He was invited to prepare a report on 

 the birds collected during the Abyssinian campaign by 

 W. Jesse, which was published in the 'Transactions of the 

 Zoological Society' in 1870, while his first paper in 'The 

 Ibis' on some ^evi Zealand birds collected by Julius von 

 Haast appeared in 1869. 



He made excursions to California in 1872 and to Lapland 

 in 1873, and three years later he accompanied Alfred Brehm 

 and Graf Walburg-Zeil-Trauchburg in a journey of zoolo- 

 gical exploration in western Siberia. This expedition was 

 undertaken on behalf of the Bremea Geographical Society, 

 and Finsch sent some letters describing his route and the 

 birds met with to ' The Ibis,^ which will be found in 

 the volume for 1877. 



Finsch was now a traveller of considerable experience, 

 and, having resigned in 1878 his Curatorship of the Bremen 

 Museum, he started off on his first great journey to the 

 South Seas, assisted by the Humboldt fund in Berlin; this 

 occupied the years 1879-1882. He visited the Polynesian 

 Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and New Guinea, and sent 

 to 'The Ibis' for 1880-82 a series of nine letters describing 

 his progress and his ornithological experiences. 



