RICHARD BOWDLER SHARPE. 283 



Fame among the devotees of his own special science, and 

 his name will ever be honoured by his brother ornitho- 

 logists, but no memoir of him would be complete without 

 mention being made, however briefly, of the extra- 

 ordinarily wide range of his knowledge. 



An instance of this may be noted in connection with 

 the editing of his " Gilbert White's Selborne," which 

 led him to make literary researches in the records of 

 churches in White's country. He became interested in the 

 architecture and history of the churches, and in a few 

 months he became so devoted to archaeology as to make 

 some of his friends seriously wonder whether the ornitho- 

 logist was not going to develop into an antiquarian of no 

 less renown. He occupied much of his annual vacation 

 in his later years in carrying out investigations into the 

 history of Basing Castle, and with the permission and 

 co-operation of Lord Bolton he spent many weeks in 

 conducting excavations on the site. He thus acquired 

 a store of knowledge on the subject, and collected con- 

 siderable fresh data connected with the great siege of 

 Basing Castle by the Parliamentarians with a view to 

 the publication of a book embodying many new facts 

 relating to the matter, a work on the writing of which 

 he was engaged at the time of his death. 



Sharpe was a man of remarkably wide and varied 

 sympathies and interests. He was above all intensely 

 human, and enjoyed life to the full. His keen sense of 

 humour, his overflowing good nature, his love of pure fun, 

 almost boyish to the last, his buoyant spirits, all combined 

 to give him an irrepressible optimism that must have 

 often stood him in good stead in the stern battle of life 

 in which he had to take his full share, fighting against 

 heavy odds the greater part of his life. He was a delight- 

 ful companion for a holiday, prone to practical joking, 

 though always of a harmless and inoffensive sort. I 

 remember on one occasion we were driving in a hansom 

 in the neighbourhood of Knightsbridge, when he suddenly 

 stopped the cab and asked the driver whether he knew 



