202 Obituary Notice. tf 



April 



of the Council, at the meetings of which he continued to be a 

 constant attendant. 



" In 1886 Sclater began the transfer of his private collection of 

 American bird-skins to the British Museum. This collection 

 contained 8,824 specimens, representing 3,158 species, belonging 

 to the Orders Passeres, Picarise, and Psittaci. It may be re- 

 marked that when he began his collection at Oxford in 1847 he 

 intended to collect birds of every kind and from all parts of the 

 world, but after a few years he resolved to confine his attention 

 particularly to the ornithology of South and Central America, 

 and to collect specimens only in the Orders above mentioned, which 

 were at that time generally less known than the others, and of 

 which the specimens are of a more nianageable size for the private 

 collector. 



" At the time of the beginning of this transfer, which was only 

 completed in 1890, Sclater agreed to prepare some of the volumes 

 of the British Museum ' Catalogue of Birds,' relating to the 

 groups to which he had paid special attention. In accordance 

 with this arrangement, by the expenditure of fully two years of 

 his leisure time on each volume, he prepared the eleventh volume 

 in 1886, the fourteenth in 1888, the fifteenth in 1890, and half 

 of the nineteenth in 1891. 



" When the Challenger Expedition started to go round the 

 world in 1873, at the request of his friend, the late Sir Wyville 

 Thomson, he agreed to work out all the birds. Soon after the 

 return of the expedition, in 1877, the specimens collected were 

 placed in his hands, and, with the assistance of his ornithological 

 friends, were speedily reported upon in a series of papers con- 

 tributed to the Zoological Society's Proceedings. The whole 

 of these papers were reprinted, with additions and illustrations, 

 and now form part of the second volume of the ' Zoology ' of the 

 Challenger Expedition. 



" Geography, being very closely connected with zoology, always 

 commanded Sclater' s hearty interest. He became a life member 

 of the Royal Geographical Society in 1880, and attended its 

 meetings very regularly. He also served two years on the 

 Council, and was a member of the Geographical Club. He assisted 

 in promoting many researches in foreign parts, chiefly, however, 

 with a view to obtaining collections in natural history from strange 

 places. Among these may be especially mentioned Sir H. H. 

 Johnston's expedition to KiHma-njaro in 1884 and Professor 

 Bayley Balfour's visit to Socotra in 1880. He also took a leading 

 part in sending out naturalists to Kerguelen Land and Rodriguez 

 with the Transit-of- Venus Expeditions of 1874-75, and in many 

 other similar efforts to explore little-known parts of the earth's 

 surface. 



" In fact, his work on Geographical Distribution and Classification 

 may be considered his greatest claim to the gratitude of posterity. 

 Of the former subject he set forth his views soon after 1858, when 

 he suggested for the acceptance of ornithologists his six well- 



