The Late Professor Newton. 273


decided views on many vital questions, he was always willing to

allow the rights of the other side. His excessive caution per-

haps curtailed to some extent the good he might have done, and

though almost invariably sympathetic with new ideas, he rarely

strongly advocated them, preferring merely to encourage, with-

out committing himself as a believer.


He was by no means a voluminous writer, but it may truly

be said that he published nothing that was not good and sound,

and his works will, we venture to predict, be still a living force

when much of the literature which passes for science in the

present day is lost and forgotten.


In 1858 he was one of those who founded the British

Ornithologists' Union, and for a time, he edited their journal,

the Ibis, which is now one of the foremost scientific bird pub-

lications of the world. He was also editor for some years of the

Aves of the Zoological Record. Among his other works we

may notice the Dictionary of Birds, consisting of a reprint of

his masterly articles in the Encyclopcedia Brittannica, and much

additional matter; A Manual of Zoology first published in 1872;

The Extinct Birds of the Mascarene Islands, published in the Tra?is.

Roy. Soc. ; Zoology of Ancie7it Europe; the first two volumes of

the Fourth Edition of Yarrell's British Birds, and many other

papers in scientific periodicals.


Though perhaps it will not rank as his best book, judged

from a purely scientific standpoint, the work of his life was un-

doubtedly the Ootheca Wolleyana, a large book in two volumes,

published as a memorial to his great friend, John Wolley.

Although the first of the four parts comprising the work was

published in 1864, the last part was only completed a few months

prior to his death. The delay has undoubtedly detracted from

its scientific value, but as a memorial to one of the most energetic

and indefatigable of ornithological explorers, it will stand for

ever.


Bird Protection was a subject on which he was greatly

interested, and he was largely instrumental in getting many of

the earlier acts passed. He was also one of the Committee

appointed by the British Association to study the migration of



