PREFACE 



AN author's memoir may sometimes be said to be 

 in a great measure written in his lifetime. This 

 was, perhaps, especially true in the case of my 

 father. 



To so many, however, he was known only as 

 a popular writer on natural history, and birds in 

 particular, that I have been induced to write this 

 sketch of his life, which may give those to whom 

 his name is thus familiar, as well as others, a fuller 

 account of his many-sided activities than they 

 might else have gained. 



While it is clear that a son, as such, is from one 

 point of view the best-qualified person to write a 

 memoir of his father, so from another is he the 

 least so. Still, if the close ties of kinship have at 

 times led me to say less or more than I might 

 otherwise have done, I cannot but cherish the hope 

 that any shortcomings and oversteppings may on 

 this ground be indulgently regarded. 



Holding the pronounced views my father did with 

 regard to Darwinism and vivisection, it might by 

 some have been thought advisable to have omitted 

 in these pages special mention of questions which 



