THE AQUATIC WARBLER. 99 



the transportation to the British Museum of a 

 collection made in an island now ceded to 

 Germany, and Mr. Seebohm was asked to retract 

 his offer, which he very generously consented to 

 do, with a result which could scarcely have been 

 foreseen. 



At the time when I saw the Gatke collection, 

 the specimens had much deteriorated. Their 

 owner is an artist, and the birds were all ex- 

 hibited in his studio, which had top-lights, and 

 as the sun, for many successive years, had beaten 

 down through the glass on to the specimens, the 

 latter had become dreadfully bleached, and had, 

 in many instances, lost their colour. A great 

 number of specimens, too, were not in glass 

 cases, and were covered with dust. All this was 

 known to several of us, and Mr. Seebohm's offer 

 was all the more patriotic, as he was not only 

 fully aware of the condition of the collection, but 

 his chief object was to preserve it for posterity. 



The artistic taste which Gatke brought into 

 his sea-scapes, he bestowed upon the mounting 

 of his collection of birds, and no more beautiful 

 example of the taxidermists' art were to be found 

 than in the Gatke collection of Heligoland birds, 



