448 BihUograpMcal Notice. 



and collect and write about his discoveries, but he was probably 

 the prime mover in the launching of the British Ornithologists' 

 Union and its well-known quarterly journal 'The Ibis,' which may 

 be said to have been conceived in his rooms at Cambridge. To the 

 devoted hand of ornithologists Avho put their heads together to 

 launch that publication upon the world those must have been happy 

 days. They were the spacious days of ornithological adventures, 

 expeditions, and research in the open field ; spacious days of 

 discovery ; days of the constant recording of new species as con- 

 trasted with subspecies ; days of romance, when it was still possible 

 to live buoyed up by the hope that one might discover the Great 

 Auk alive and "in tlie flesh"; days when maps had still many vast 

 spaces to be charted and foreign countries were veritable oldorados 

 for the happy ornithologist eager to ransack them of their treasures. 



Newton may, in a sense, be said to have been born and bred 

 upon one of these happy hunting-grounds in the form of his father's 

 estates at Elvedon, w^here he first acquired, with his brother 

 Edward, his taste for ornithology. In those early days of the last 

 century the great Bustard, though on the verge of extinction, still 

 survived in the brecks of Norfolk — ^.the last of the resident stock 

 was killed in 1838, — and Montagu's Harrier might be fairly 

 commonly met with in the feus of Cambridgeshire. In such an 

 early environment there need be little wonder that the ornitho- 

 h)gical factor in Newton's mental complex soon developed. It Jed 

 him, in spite of physical disabilities, further afield — to Norway, 

 ]^;ipland, Spitzbergen (when an expedition to that boreal region 

 was in the nature of a considerable adventure), Iceland, the West 

 Indies, the Orkneys, and Faroe Islands, and on many yachting 

 excursions along the west coast of fi^cotland. 



By the happy accident of his brother Edward's position at 

 Mauritius he was led to study, through the acquisition of a fine 

 collection of fossil bones, the extinct Dodos of the Mascarone Islands, 

 and as a result we have his article on the Dodo in the ' Dictionary 

 of Birds,' an exposition which "may be cited as an illustration of 

 the learning and the exhaustive criticism with which he could 

 discuss a matter which strongly appealed to him," to say nothing 

 of the almost complete skeleton which is one of the cherished 

 possessions of the Cambridge University Museum. It would be 

 beyond the scope of these few remarks to dwell on the fact of how 

 much that Museum owes to Newton's efforts. Indeed, we would 

 rather recommend Mr. "VVoUaston's book for the admirable way in 

 which he has been able to catch the spirit of the ornithological 

 period through which Newton lived and worked, and to depict for 

 lis the very nature of the man as he was, than as a serious attempt 

 to record in an exhaustive way his work as a zoologist. 



The book cannot fail to fascinate any reader who has a soul 

 above the mere systematic side of ornithology, and for whom the 

 memory of such men as the Newtons, Tristram, the Godmans, 

 Sclater, Wolley, Lilford, Gurney, Salvin, Taylor, Eyton, and a host 

 of others of their time marks a very notable and a very happy 

 period in the history of British ornithology. PjiRcy It. Lowe. 



