36 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



but while returning to his house at Chiswick he appears to have 

 contracted a severe chill, which rapidly developed into pleuro- 

 pneumonia, and ended fatally on December 25th. 



He was born on November 22nd, 1847, and was the eldest son of 

 the late Thomas Bowdler Sharpe, well known as the publisher of 

 ' Sharpe' s London Magazine.' He early displayed a great taste for 

 natural history, more especially for birds and insects, and as a boy 

 spent much of his time in the company of William Briggs, a natura- 

 list of considerable skill, who helped him to form a collection of 

 mounted British Birds, which was eventually presented to the British 

 Museum. 



He was educated at Peterborough (King's Scholar) and Lough- 

 borough Grammar Schools, and subsequently entered the publishing- 

 house of Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son in 1863, and worked for a time 

 with the late Mr. Bernard Quaritch. In 1867 he was appointed 

 Librarian to the Zoological Society of London, and retained that 

 post until 1872. On the death of George Eobert Gray he entered 

 the service of the Trustees of the British Museum, and was appointed 

 Senior Assistant in the Department of Zoology on September 11th, 

 1872, a post which he retained till November, 1895, when he was 

 promoted to be Assistant-Keeper in charge of the Vertebrate 

 Section. 



While Librarian to the Zoological Society he began to publish 

 some of his work, including a catalogue of his private collection of 

 African Birds and his splendid ' Monograph of the Kingfishers,' a 

 work which at once established his reputation as an ornithologist of 

 exceptional ability. He also conceived, and in partnership with 

 Mr. H. E. Dresser commenced to publish, a great serial work on the 

 'Birds of Europe,' but after fifteen parts had been issued he was 

 obliged, owing to other important engagements, to relinquish his 

 share of the work, and the remaining parts were completed by Mr. 

 Dresser alone. Shortly after his appointment to the British Museum 

 he commenced to write the great work of his life, ' The Catalogue of 

 the Birds in the British Museum.' 



No one of the present generation who visits the Bird Room at the 

 Natural History Museum can have any conception of the difficulties 

 under which work was carried on in the old days at the British 

 Museum, the underground dungeons which were used as workrooms 

 being not only very small but very insufficiently lighted. The first 

 volume of this Catalogue, containing the Birds of Prey, w 7 as completed 

 and published by the Trustees in 1874, and the whole work, contained 



