436 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



OBITUARY. 



HOWARD SAUNDERS. 



It is with deep regret that we have to record the death of Mr. 

 Howard Saunders, F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.R.G.S., which occurred at his 

 London residence on Sunday the 20th of October. After a long and 

 painful illness, which he bore with the most heroic fortitude, he passed 

 away at the age of seventy-two. His loss will be mourned by a very 

 wide circle of friends and acquaintances in all parts of the world, but 

 more particularly by ornithologists, for, though a man of many and 

 varied tastes, he was best known through his writings on birds, and 

 was more especially famous as the author of the widely known ' Manual 

 of British Birds,' and for his monograph of the Gulls {Larida), which 

 formed part of volume xxv. of ' The Catalogue of the Birds in the 

 British Museum ' (1896). 



Mr. Saunders's death, following so closely on that of Prof. Alfred 

 Newton, makes the year 1907 an extremely sad one in the history of 

 ornithology, for these two men were universally acknowledged to be 

 our most learned authorities on British Birds. All difficult questions 

 relating to British ornithology were invariably referred to one or other 

 of them, and no one ever appealed for help without obtaining the fullest 

 information and the soundest advice. 



Mr. Saunders was born in London in 1835, and was educated at 

 Dr. Gavin Smith's school at Rottingdean, where at an early age he 

 displayed a special interest in birds, and made his first recorded 

 observation. Born of an old and honourable merchant family of the 

 City of London, he received during his early years a business training, 

 which maybe traced in his accurate and methodical manner of dealing 

 with any subject he undertook. All his writings bear testimony of the 

 same careful and painstaking treatment, and it is not too much to say 

 that his ' Manual of British Birds,' which is perhaps the best and most 

 widely appreciated of his works, will always remain a model of accuracy 

 and learning compressed into the smallest possible bulk. To each 

 species he devoted only a page and a half of letterpress, but within that 

 limited space he managed to include not only a complete description of 

 its various plumages, but its geographical range, habits, and all other 

 important details. 



At the age of twenty Mr. Saunders left England in the clipper-ship 

 ' Atrevida,' bound for South America, and his observations on the 

 Albatrosses noted during the voyage were published in a letter to the 

 ' Ibis ' for 1866. During 1855 to 1856 he visited Brazil, Chile, and 



