624 Obituary. 
record the loss of Atrrep Newton, who died at Magdalene 
College, Cambridge, on the 7th of June, 1907. By a 
curious coincidence, this happened to be the day of the 
celebration of the bicentenary of Linnzeus, and the sad news, 
as it circulated among the Fellows of the Linnean Society, 
served to cast a gloom over the proceedings of the evening. 
Alfred Newton was born at Geneva on the 11th June, 
1829, and thus, at the time of his decease, only wanted four 
days of completing his 78th year. He was one of a large 
family of brothers and sisters, and his father was the owner of 
the well-known estate of Elveden, on the borders of Suffolk 
and Norfolk, famous for its partridges. In fact, the eldest 
brother, William, one of the few survivors of the Coldstreams 
at Inkerman, and the youngest brother, Edward, well known 
to many of the members of the B. O. U., ranked amongst the 
crack partridge-shots of their day. Nor was Alfred at all 
averse to this sport, though his lameness, said to have been 
the result of an accident during infancy, was always a bar 
to any great physical exertion. Perhaps it was this cause 
which rendered him more contemplative and observant of 
the features of the very interesting district in which it was 
his good fortune to spend his early years. 
There is no record of Alfred having been to a public 
school, but when he came to Cambridge as an undergraduate, 
in 1848, he was already a thorough-going naturalist, both by 
nature and by habit. For this reason, perhaps, the ordinary 
curriculum of the University was distasteful to him; nor was 
his early devotion to natural history always regarded with 
approval at home, beg considered unlikely to conduce to 
success in after-life. Yet he obtained a considerable repu- 
tation in his College as an essayist in English, and his love 
for natural history was the making of him, though no one 
exactly anticipated the distinguished career that he was 
destimed to achieve. Had he chosen the law as his profession, 
which might well have been the case, he would have made 
an excellent barrister, and there is nothing he would have 
eujoyed more thoroughly than the cross-examination of a 
prevaricating witness. . 
