66 THE OSPREY. 



OBITUARIES. 



Death of Hugh Alexander Macpherson. — Hugh Alexander Macpher- 

 son, a British ornithologist of considerable distinction, was born in Calcutta, 

 (India) in 184t^, the descendant of a family distinguished in educational circles. 

 His father (Mr. William Macpherson of Trinity College, Cambridge) was the 

 editor of the celebrated "Quarterly Review" and his grandfather Professor of 

 Greek at Aberdeen. Young Macpherson, after his preliminary education, 

 entered Oriel College, Oxford, graduated as B. A. in 1881, and received 

 M. A. in 1884. He was ordained in 1882, and served as curate in Carlisle, 

 London, and Ptilochry in the central Highlands. At the last place he died, 

 after a brief illness, on the 26th of November, 1901. 



He was the author of "many hundreds of articles and paragraphs" in 

 "the Zoologist" and other periodicals, and several volumes on various zoolo^ 

 gical subjects. His ornithological works were on the "Birds of Cumberland" 

 (1886), the "Visitation of Pallas' s Sand Grouse to Scotland in 1888 (18S9), 

 "A Handbook of British Birds" (1891), "The Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland", 

 etc., (1892), the ornithographic portions of the volumes on the Partridge and 

 Grouse of the "Fur and Feather series" (1893), the History of Fowling (1897), 

 the text of the volumes on Birds of the "Royal Natural History" from Corvid^ 

 to Ccerebidse, and the Tubinares of the "British Birds, their nests and eggs". 



Death of Alpheus Hyatt. — On the 15th of January, Prof. Alpheus 

 Hyatt died suddenly of heart disease at Cambridge, Mass. He was, to all ex- 

 ternal manifestations, as well as usual and in the street awaiting a car when he 

 was seen to abruptly lose his balance and fall to the ground. He was born at 

 Washington, D. C, April 5, 1838, and consequently was near the end of his 

 sixty-fourth year. After his preliminary education, he went in 1858 to the 

 Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, attracted there by the fame 

 of Agassiz, and graduated in 1862. He immediately afterwards enlisted in 

 the army, was promoted to a captaincy, and was mustered out after nine 

 months' service in 1863. He returned to Harvard and renewed his studies 

 under Agassiz. In 1867 he was made a curator of the Essex Institute; in 

 1869, a curator of the Peabody Academy of Science; in 1881, professor of 

 zoology and paleontology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 

 subsequently held various other positions. His life-work was chiefly on the 

 fossil cephalopods, but he paid attention to various other groups, and espe- 

 cially to the sponges. He began to catalogue the Birds of the Boston Society 

 of Natural History, but only completed one number, a catalogue of the 

 Spheniscidse (1872). 



