3776 The Zoologist — November, 1873. 



The same hesitation to advance his own opinions or subject 

 himself to criticism in public print was the cause of his literary 

 efforts, with one exception, being limited to a few brief notes on 

 ornithological occurrences, contributed from time to time to the 

 pages of this journal. 



That thoroughness, however, and earnest love of truth, which 

 won for him, whether in business transactions or in private life, the 

 respect and esteem of all, was not less indelibly stamped upon the 

 pursuits of his leisure hours. To take nothing for granted upon which 

 a doubt might exist, and to deem no amount of time or trouble too 

 great to establish a fact, however trivial, were the golden rules that 

 guided him in his Natural-History researches, and gave a double 

 value to the result of his investigations. I could cite many cases 

 in which his extreme good nature, apart from the general interest 

 that he felt in such enquiries, led him to take infinite pains in 

 collecting authentic information for friends and correspondents ; 

 memorably so, during the great sand grouse immigration of 1863, at 

 which time, by his careful sifting of evidence in different localities, 

 I was materially assisted in drawing up a paper on the distribution 

 of that species in Norfolk and Suffolk. 



For some time prior to our first meeting, the name of Thomas 

 Dix had been familiar to me through the pages of the ' Zoologist,' 

 in connection with Ornithology in the Eastern Counties, and if 

 I cannot now recall the exact date, I well remember it occurred in 

 the Norwich Museum, and that an hour spent together in the 

 "British Bird" room commenced at once, through the freemasonry 

 of kindred tastes, a friendship warm as it was mutual. An 

 acquaintance thus formed led naturally enough to a correspondence 

 on kindred subjects, which continued uninterruptedly till within a 

 few months of his death ; yet I can but regret that, although his 

 occupations at that time laid chiefly in the adjoining county of 

 Suffolk, our opportunities of personal intercourse should have been 

 limited to his visits, at long intervals, to Norwich and West Harling. 

 There was one occasion, however, when he returned for some weeks 

 to Norfolk, the recollection of which will always be a source of 

 peculiar gratification. It was in the early summer of 1864, just 

 previous to his entering upon an appointment in Wales, that I paid 

 a long-promised visit to him, at the house of a relative, Mr. John 

 Ringer, of West Harling; and it was there, in our daily rambles 

 and hourly conversations on the one absorbing topic of Natural 



