OBITUARY NOTICE— THOMAS TATE, ESQ. 113 



Retiring from the practice of his profession in 1885 he was 

 subsequently made a Justice of the Peace for the county, 

 sitting with great regularity on the Ahiwick Bench, where 

 his grasp of the subject before him, his acute reason backed 

 by his legal knowledge, made him trusted and looked up to 

 by his colleagues, the bar, and the public. He was also 

 Chairman of the Amble Petty Sessional Court, and Chairman 

 of the Alnwick Savings Bank. 



Elected a member of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club on 

 the 29th of July 1863, he was, at the time of his death, 

 eleventh in seniority on the roll of 334 members. 



Possessed of a well chosen library of between two and three 

 thousand volumes, Mr Tate was not only a well-read but an 

 accurate man. He read the proofs of the whole of the seventh 

 volume of the new History of Northumberland, and by his 

 pointed and appropriate remarks and emendations rendered 

 the present writer no small service. 



He was once solicited to prepare a paper for the Club's 

 Transactions on the history of fox hunting in Northumberland, 

 on which subject he was perhaps better informed than any 

 other man. He did not absolutely refuse, but wrote that 

 he would " have to enlarge " his " knowledge of the fox hunting 

 of the country very considerably before " he would " venture 

 to record it in a permanent form." The Club is the loser 

 that he contributed so little to its publications, and that he 

 never occupied the office of President. 



Mr Tate leaves a widow and a family of two sons and 



J. C. Hodgson. 



