3 [Vol. xxvii. 



Mr. Dresser, who was specially selected for the post by the 

 Committee. He has sent us an excellent Report on the 

 proceedings of the Congress which will appear in ' The Ibis ' 

 for this month. 



Before I proceed to make remarks on other parts of my 

 subject I must call your attention to the very sad loss we 

 have experienced during the past year by the death of two 

 of our much-esteemed Members — Dr. Sharpe and Mr. Boyd 

 Alexander. Dr. Sharpe^ one of the best-known and most 

 devoted students of Birds that ever livedo and^ in fact, the 

 founder of this Club, attended our Meeting on the 15th of 

 December, 1909, a few days before his death. Boyd 

 Alexander, the celebrated Explorer, who confessed that the 

 study of bird-life was the main object of his adventurous 

 career, met his fate in Central Africa, by the hand of an 

 assassin, on the 2nd of April. I need not repeat here the 

 well-deserved eulogies that have been given of both these 

 heroes of Ornithology in the pages of ^ The Ibis ' : they are 

 fully appreciated by all of us. 



Although the preface to the fifth volume of Sharpens 

 'Hand-list' was dated ''August 1909,^' the book was not 

 sent out until some months afterwards, and therefore clearly 

 comes within the limits of my "Address.-" Sharpe's ' Hand- 

 list ' is a mine of wealth into which all workers in Orni- 

 thology may dig with profit — they are sure to find gold. 

 But they will also find in it a certain amount of alloy, and 

 should not adopt the nomenclature and references of the 

 work without careful examination. It is a great misfortune, 

 to my mind, that Sharpe began his List at the bottom of 

 the tree of Bird -life and ended at the top. The one method 

 of treatment is, of course, as correct as the other, but until 

 recent years all writers on Birds had begun at the top of the 

 Class. Had Sharpe simply followed the arrangement used in 

 the ' Catalogue of Birds' his ' Hand-list' would have been of 

 double value. The ' Hand-list ' was projected as a supple- 

 ment to the ' Catalogue ' and should have conformed with 

 it in its scheme of classification. Nevertheless the ' Hand- 

 list ' is a great work, and will render the name of Bichard 

 BowDLER Sha'rpe evcr famous among Ornithologists. 



