192 Obituary— James Adei/ Birds, B.A., F.G.8. 



scheme for this was Mr. Hulke's, and he was Chairman of the Joint 

 Laboratories Committee from its foundation. The work that has 

 been done and is now doing there speaks sufficiently for the wisdom 

 of the scheme. At the Royal Society, of which he was elected 

 a Fellow in 1867, he served on the Council during 1879, 1880, 

 1888, and 1889 ; and was also a member of the Scientific Belief 

 Committee. His communications to the Transactions of the Society 

 were numerous, and the last of them was read before the Society on 

 May 12th, 1892 — "On the Shoulder-girdle in Ichthyosauria and 

 Sauropterygia." 



His strict devotion to duty was no doubt answerable for his death. 

 He took no holiday during the past year, his time being too occupied 

 to permit him to do so, and the incessant and acute strain was 

 telling upon him at Christmas. This much he admitted. On the 

 night of Thursday, Feb. 7th, a terribly bitter night, he was 

 summoned to the hospital to operate upon a case of strangulated 

 hernia, from which he did not return until 3.30 a.m. On the 

 following day he had a little bronchitis, but did not keep his bed. 

 Indeed, he operated on Saturday at the Middlesex Hospital on a 

 case of cerebral abscess, and went to the wards again on Sunday 

 (Feb. 10th) and Monday (Feb. 11th). But later in the day he had 

 to recognize that he was seriouslj? ill, and the bronchitis increasing, 

 pneumonia supervened, and he died on Tuesday, Feb. 19th, about 



noon. 



' ' His life was gentle ; and the elements 



So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 



And say to all the world, This was a man ! " 



Shakespeare. 



JAMES ADEY BIRDS, B.A., F.G.S. 



Born November 9th, 1831. Died December 15th, 1894. 



James Adey Birds was descended from an old Derbyshire family, 

 the Birds of Locko, Stanton Hall, and Bakewell, Derbyshire. He 

 was the s<m of the Eev. W. T. Birds, and was born November 9th, 

 1831, at Preston Eectory, Salop. He was educated at Rugby, and 

 graduated at Christ Church, Oxford. He took a deep interest in 

 geologj', was a careful observer of geological facts, and communi- 

 cated several papers to the Geological Magazine between 1866 

 and 1881, notably on "A bed of Chalk-flints near Spa, Belgium" 

 (1866), on the "Post-Pliocene formations of the Isle of Man" 

 (1875), on the "Geology of the Channel Islands" (1878), "'Beekite' 

 in the Channel Islands" (1879), "Foreign Pebbles on our South 

 Coast" (1881), etc. 



Mr. Birds was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1878. 

 He was a good classical scholar and linguist, -and prepared an 

 English rendering of Goethe's "Faust" (published by Longmans 

 in two volumes in 1880). 



He formed an excellent geological collection, which he bequeathed 

 to the borough of Derby, the chief town of the county where his 

 ancestors had so long resided. He died at West Bournemouth, on 

 December 15th, 1894, in his 64:th year. 



