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HENRY BAKER TRISTRAM, 1822—1906. 
THe Rev. Henry Baker Tristram, long familiarly known to naturalists all 
over the world as Canon Tristram, was born on May 11, 1822, at Eglingham, 
near Alnwick, of which large parish his father was vicar. He received his 
early education at Durham School, and passed to Lincoln College, Oxford, 
where he graduated in 1844, taking a second class in classics. In the 
following year he was ordained Deacon, and shortly afterwards became Curate 
of Morton Bishop. He had not been long engaged in his clerical duties 
when he developed such signs of a weak chest that it was judged expedient 
to send him abroad. Accordingly, in 1847, he received the appointment of 
Acting Naval and Military Chaplain at Bermuda, and held it for two years. 
That he had been from early boyhood an ardent lover of nature and a keen 
collector of plants and animals cannot be doubted. But it was probably 
during his residence in Bermuda that his future career as a naturalist took 
a definite beginning. Among the officers of the 42nd Highland Regiment, 
quartered there at the time, was Henry Maurice Drummond (brother of 
Drummond of Megginch), who had been stimulated into active natural history 
pursuits by coming under the influence of Hugh Edwin Strickland, until he 
made himself more than a mere amateur ornithologist. Tristram caught from 
him the same spirit of scientific observation, and took up the study of shells 
and birds in the serious way which he never afterwards abandoned. On his 
return to England, in 1849, he was presented to the living of Castle Eden, in 
Durham, and in 1850 married a daughter of P. Bowlby, an officer who had 
served in the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns. Hight children were born 
of this marriage, consisting of one son and seven daughters. 
To the duties of a country clergyman he for some years added those of 
tutor, and took pupils (with whom he made occasional excursions to the 
Continent, travelling one year along the West Coast of Norway as far as 
the Arctic Circle). The lung affection, however, which had necessitated his 
seeking the warmer climate of Bermuda, again returned upon him. He was 
advised to spend a winter in Algeria. From this change, which he took in 
the winter of 1855—56, he received so much benefit that he repeated his 
visit next winter, and he used to refer to these two sojourns in Africa as the 
prime cause of his being able to throw off the ailment which had threatened 
him. Having formed a friendship with the French Governor-General, he 
was enabled to push his explorations to the furthest French outposts, and 
beyond these far into the desert, living almost all the time under canvas. In 
the year 1857 he was joined there by Mr. W. H. Hudleston and the late 
Mr. Osbert Salvin. This party succeeded in making large ornithological 
collections, which proved to be of great interest. During the following year 
(1858—59) Tristram travelled widely in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, 
including Palestine and Egypt. 
