538 Obituary. [Ibis, 



Born in 1872, Mr. McLean was the eldest son of the late 

 Alan McLean of Duart, Havelock North, Hawke's Bay, 

 New Zealand, and grandson of the late John Chambers, who 

 owned the Te Mata estate in the same district and who was 

 a well known and highly respected pioneer. He was edncated 

 privately and at Wellington College, New Zealand, and 

 afterwards lived for some years on his father's station, 

 Waikohu, near Gisborne ; snbsequently he acquired some 

 property of his own in the same district. 



From his early youth McLean, who lived in a somewhat 

 unsettled part ot: the country where there still existed a 

 good deal of the aboriginal bush, was deeply interested in 

 the bird-life of his native land and specially in those native 

 species which have become so scarce since the introduction 

 of the British birds into New Zealand. These have taken 

 the place of the native species, which ai'e now only to be 

 found in the more remote and unsettled districts. 



So long ago as 1889 McLean sent a note to 'The Ibis ' 

 on the breeding-place of the Spotted Shag [Phalacrocorax 

 puHclatns) at Cape Kidnappers near Napier. This was 

 followed by other contributions in 1892, 1894', and 1907, 

 dealing with the rarer bush-birds met with by him in the 

 Gisborne and neighbouring districts. With this last con- 

 tribution there was sent to the Natural History Museum a 

 collection of skins, among which Mr. Ogilvie-Grant found 

 a new Fan-tailed Flycatcher which he named Pseudogerygone 

 macleani after the collector. 



To the eleventh volume of the 'Emu' (1911-12) 

 Mr. McLean sent a long paper of field-observations on 

 the Bush-birds of New Zealand, and both this and the 

 papers in ' The Ibis '' were illustrated with photographs of 

 the birds with their nests and eggs, taken by Mr. McLean, 

 as he was very skilful with the camera. 



Mr. McLean was elected a member of the Union in 1897, 

 and his death at the- comparatively early age of forty -six 

 is a great loss to the limited band of New Zealand 

 ornithologists. 



