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OBITUAEY NOTICE. 



E. W. Gates. 



The death of Mr. Eugene William Gates, which occurred at 

 Edgbaston, Birmingham, on the 16th of November, will be greatly 

 regretted by all ornithologists and more especially by those who 

 have made a study of the Birds of India. For some years past he 

 had been in failing health, and his death at the comparatively 

 ■early age of 66 was therefore not unexpected. 



Mr. Gates was an officer in the Public Works Department in 

 Burmah from 1867 to 1899, and rose to the highest positions in 

 that branch of the service. He M'as an ardent naturalist, and all 

 his spare time was devoted to the study of his favourite science. 



As an ornithologist Mr. Gates had few equals, and will long be 

 remembered for the excellence of his writings. When in England 

 in 1882-83 he spent much of his time at the British Museum, 

 Bloomsbury, in preparing his first well-known work " A Handhool- 

 to the Birds of British Burmah^ Subsequently he wrote the first 

 and second volumes on Birds in the Fauna of British India, edited 

 by the late W. T. Blanford — which volumes may justly be regarded 

 •as models of what such works ought to be. The present seems a 

 fitting opportunity to explain a ridiculous passage which appeared 

 in the otherwise admirably written second volume and which has 

 long puzzled ornithologists. In volume ii, p. 290, Gates 

 (apparently) writes that the note of the Streak-eyed Wagtail 

 Motacilla octdar is is "a prolonged Pooh." The explanation of this 

 remarkable statement may now be given, the author and editor, as 

 well as the perpetrator of the joke being now, alas, dead. When 

 Gates was in the middle of preparing his second volume, at the 

 Natural Historj^ Museum, the writer and the late Dr. Sharpe hap- 

 pened to pass the table covered with his manuscript on their way 

 to lunch, and Sharpe, who loved a joke, said " let us add some- 

 thing funny to Gates' description of this Wagtail," little thinking 

 that his remark would ever get into print. He never doubted 

 that the eagle-eye of the author would detect and strike out the 

 line, after having a laugh over it, knowing the soiirce from whence 



