( 235 ) 

 FREDERICK WEBB HEADLEY. 



It was with the deepest regret that the many friends of 

 F. W. Headley heard of his unexpected death in a nursing 

 home at Epsom on November 25th, 1919. As his oldest 

 friend — our friendship dating from the year 1876, when we 

 met on a reading party in North Wales — I welcome the 

 opportunity of paying a heartfelt tribute to his memory ; 

 and his death, when he was in the full vigour of body and 

 mind, is a loss not only to his school friends but to a larger 

 circle in the world outside. 



Headley was a many-sided man, and no one ever illustrated 

 with greater success the precept — " Whatsoever thy hand 

 findeth to do, do it with thy might." Son of the late 

 Rev. H. Headley, of Brinsop Vicarage, near Hereford, he 

 was born on April loth, 1856. A scholar of Caius College, 

 a First Class in the Classical Tripos, he was far more than 

 a mere scholar. Appointed to a mastership at Haileybury 

 College by the late Dr. Bradby in 1880 he at once pro- 

 ceeded to give proof of his versatility by taking a form 

 on the modern side and teaching modern languages with 

 marked success, though he had had no special training in 

 French or German. He was devoted to literature, art and 

 music, but the work with which he was specially identified 

 was the study of natural science, and more particularly the 

 life and flight of birds. He has left behind him at Haileybury 

 lasting memorials in our well arranged Natural History 

 Museum and our Natural History Society, many of whose 

 members came under the spell of his inspiration and owed 

 to him a real love of natural history. This would have been 

 enough for most men, but it was not enough for Headley. 

 Amid the calls of a busy life he found time to produce a 

 series of books, which bear the impress of an acute and 

 original mind : The StnicUire of Birds, 1895, Problems of 

 Evolution, 1900, Darwinism and Modern Socialism, 1907, and 

 The Flight of Birds, 1912. 



But Headley was far more than an indoor ornithologist. 

 As a field naturalist he had few equals. He knew every 

 inch of the country for miles round Haileybury, and where 

 every rare bird or flower was to be found ; in the holidays 

 he went farther afield, but always with the same objects in 

 view. Though he was a keen mountaineer and a member 

 of the Alpine Club, the birds of Switzerland appealed to him 

 more than the mountains ; he made expeditions to Algeria, 



