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OBITUARY. 



John Cordeaux. 



By the death of Mr. John Cordeaux this magazine has lost 

 one of its oldest and most esteemed contributors. From April, 

 1864, to May of the present year there has appeared in our pages, 

 from his pen alone, a series of zoological notes and observations 

 that collected would be sufficient material for a fair-sized volume, 

 and one that would, apart from its valuable contribution to avian 

 migration, be a handbook to the natural history of Lincolnshire. 



Mr. Cordeaux, who died at Great Cotes House, in Lincoln- 

 shire, on August 1st, at the age of sixty-nine, was one of the 

 recognized field naturalists of the day, and was especially an 

 ornithologist, and an authority on the birds of the county in 

 which he lived. His ' Birds of the Humber District ' was first 

 published in 1873, and a new and revised edition to April, 1899, 

 was noticed in our last issue. Formerly engaged in farming a 

 portion of the Sutton estate, he had relinquished his agricultural 

 pursuits and devoted the later years of his life to sport and 

 natural history. It was to the phenomena of avian migration 

 that he devoted much time, and he mainly helped to achieve the 

 very considerable results that have already obtained to that 

 branch of natural science. As early as 1874 he journeyed to 

 Heligoland, and visited Gatke to compare notes on the subject 

 which so interested both of them, and with which their names 

 are so identified. In 1875 he published in the 'Ibis' a critical 

 and descriptive notice of Gatke's wonderful collection of birds 

 taken on what might well be called Gatke's Island. In 1879 a 

 fresh impetus was given to the study when he joined Mr. Harvie 

 Brown in a successful endeavour to enlist the services of the 

 keepers of lightships and lighthouses along our coasts in making 

 and recording observations as to the movements of our migratory 

 birds. The Committee appointed by the British Association to 

 further this undertaking, of which he was the hard-working 



