Vol. xxv.] 48 



Dr. Sharpe was immensely popular among ornithologists 

 all over the world, and justly so, and was elected President 

 of Section A at the Ornithological Congress held at Budapest 

 in 1891 and at Paris in 1900 : he was also elected President 

 when the Congress met in London in 1905. He was an 

 honorary LL.D. of the University of Aberdeen, a Fellow of 

 the Linnean and Zoological Societies, a Member of the British 

 Ornithologists 7 Union, an Honorary or Foreign Member of 

 all the principal Ornithological Societies in the world, 

 and a recipient of the Gold Medal for Science bestowed in 

 1891 by H.I.M. the Emperor of Austria. Strange as it may 

 seem, he was never elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 

 though his claims to that distinction seemed obvious enough, 

 for services such as he rendered to science have rarely been 

 achieved by one man in his lifetime. Scientific men in 

 general are apt to belittle the work of the Systematic 

 Zoologist, but they forget that without his help they would 

 be unable to obtain a correct determination of any animal 

 and might thus fall into serious errors. I could mention 

 instances in which the elaborate work contained in certain 

 anatomical memoirs has been rendered useless by the fact 

 that the author was mistaken as to the species with which 

 he was dealing. 



Dr. Sharpe was a well-known and most popular member 

 of the Savage Club, and at one time was a regular attendant 

 at the dinners given every Saturday night. One of the best 

 evenings the writer remembers attending as a guest of that 

 Club was on an occasion when Dr. Sharpe was in the Chair. 



Few people knew Dr. Sharpe so well as the writer, who 

 had been his colleague in the Natural History Museum for 

 nearly 28 years and cooperated with him in building up the 

 now unrivalled Collection of Birds. Those who only met 

 Dr. Sharpe during the last 10 years of his life cannot realize 

 the extraordinary energy he formerly possessed and the 

 enormous amount of work he was able to undertake and 

 successfully accomplish. His immense and almost boyish 

 enthusiasm never failed him to the end ; but during the 

 last few years of his life one could not help noticing with 



