HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS 87 



cal formation. His loss is feelingly alluded to in 

 the " History of British Birds." He and my father 

 had secured places next to one another the first day 

 of the meeting of the British Association in Hull in 

 1853, over which Professor Sedgwick presided. Not 

 twenty-four hours after they parted company his dear 

 and valued friend was no more. " Alas ! " he wrote, 

 " that the words of Professor Sedgwick, near whose 

 right hand he sat, and whose place in the chair he 

 had fitly and worthily occupied from time to time, 

 so eloquently and feelingly, and as it were forebod- 

 ingly, uttered on the afternoon of the same day in 

 his concluding speech, that possibly some of those 

 then present might not meet together at the next 

 anniversary, should so soon and so fatally be ful- 

 filled ! ... On one only other occasion in my life, 

 when another valued friend, W. V. J. Surtees, was 

 most unfortunately drowned at Oxford, have I ever 

 had such a shock as the sudden account of his 

 death." 



Among those who frequently communicated with 

 him during the course of the publication of the 

 book, and gave him many interesting facts, may be 

 mentioned the names of Mr. O. S. Round, Mr. ]. 

 Gatcombe, Mr. W. F. W. Bird, and Mr. Arthur 

 Strickland of Burlington Quay, Yorkshire, a name- 

 sake, oddly enough, of his friend just alluded to. 

 Of Mr. Arthur Strickland he used to say that there 

 was no one of his acquaintance who knew more 

 about birds, whether English or foreign, than he. 



Although the work had been so many times 



