Obituary. 559 



Mr. W. E. D. Scott. 



In tlie person of William Earle Dodge Scott, Birds have 

 lost one of their most devoted students. Mr. Scott was 

 born in Brooklin_, N.Y., in April 1852, the son of Moses 

 "VVarren and Juliet Ann Scott, and, after attending lectures 

 at Cornell University for a year, entered the Lawrence 

 Scientific School at Harvard as a special student of Natural 

 History. 



During Scott's career at Harvard all his spare time was 

 devoted to collecting and observing Ijirds. After graduating 

 (in 1873) he was appointed (in 1875) Curator of the newly 

 founded Museum of Biology at Princeton College. His 

 work at Princeton lasted nearly thirty years, but despite his 

 poor health and somewhat feeble physique he managed to 

 make some interesting and useful excursions during that 

 period. 



The winter of 1891-2 was passed in Jamaica. Scott's 

 " Observations on the Birds of Jamaica," which were pub- 

 lished in ' The Auk ' of 1891, 1892, and 1893, in a series of 

 eight papers, contain a mass of information on this subject, 

 which should be carefully studied by those who are interested 

 in the Ornithology of the Antilles. It gives a complete list 

 of all the Birds of Jamaica known to him (212 in number) 

 and excellent field-notes on their habits. Other excursions, 

 shorter or longer, were made to Florida, Arizona, and Vir- 

 ginia, so that there were few parts of the United States with 

 which Scott did not make himself well acquainted. Details 

 on these excursions and a general account of his adventures 

 in life will be found in his ' Story of a Bird-lover,' one of the 

 most interesting books to Ornithologists that the writer of 

 this Notice has ever read *. 



In the spring of 1900 Scott came to England and passed 

 several weeks of study in the Bird-room of the Natural 

 History Museum at South Kensington. Here his English 

 correspondents had the opportunity of making his personal 

 acquaintance, and a more kind, genial, and well-informed 



* See ' Ibis; 190:;], p. 624. 



