Vol. IX. 

 1910 



1 Obituary Notice. 263 



" At last the old gentleman, who was like Gallio and cared 

 for none of these things, looked upon his son as good-for- 

 nothing, and sent him to London — not with the proverbial 

 shilling, but with a sovereign and a letter, which gained him an 

 immediate situation at Messrs. Smith and Sons', by whom he 

 was always treated most kindly and his natural history tastes 

 encouraged. He afterwards entered the service of the late Mr. 

 Bernard Ouaritch, who remained, throughout his life, a most 

 kind and generous friend. 



" The Library of the Zoological Society having at this time 

 increased to large proportions, it was determined by the Council 

 to appoint a Librarian, and on the recommendation of the late 

 Osbert Salvin and Dr. P. L. Sclater, the post was offered to 

 Sharpe, and accepted by him. By this time he had commenced 

 his first ornithological work, the ' Monograph of the Kingfishers,' 

 and, owing to the advantages of the Zoological Society's Library, 

 he soon finished this book and commenced (with Mr. H. E. 

 Dresser) the ' Birds of Europe.' In May, 1872, George Robert 

 Gray died, and Sharpe was appointed to succeed him at the 

 British Museum and take charge of the Bird Collection. He 

 entered on his duties on the i ith of September of that year. To 

 write the ' Catalogue of Birds,' he was forced to give up the 

 ' Birds of Europe,' which was completed by Mr. Dresser. Of the 

 ' Catalogue of Birds ' he has written with his own pen thirteen 

 and a half out of the twenty-seven volumes, most of the work 

 being done in his un-official time. One of his most important 

 contributions to Ornithological Science has been the ' History 

 of the Bird-Collections in the British Museum,' a history which 

 occupied two years of his private time to write. 



" In 1 891 he was created an LL.D. of the University of 

 Aberdeen, and in the same year received by an Imperial Decree 

 the great Gold Medal for Science from H.I.M. the Emperor of 

 Austria, the highest award for Science given by that Sovereign. 

 This medal was conferred on the occasion of the Second Ornitho- 

 logical Congress at Budapest, when Dr. Sharpe delivered his 

 presidential address to Section A, on the ' Classification of Birds.' 

 He was also President of Section A at the Third Ornithological 

 Congress at Paris in 1900, and received from the President of 

 the French Republic his appointment as ' Officierde I'lnstruction 

 publique.' In 1905 Dr. Sharpe was President of the Fourth 

 Ornithological Congress in London. 



" Bowdler Sharpe was the first to conceive the idea of the 

 British Ornithologists' Club, in 1902, and for some years edited 

 its Bulletin. He is Foreign or Honorary Member of all the 

 principal Ornithological Societies of the world, and has con- 

 tributed a very large number of papers to The Ibis, as will be 

 seen from the pages of the general subject-index. 



" His work has not been limited to the birds of any particular 



