II 



Obituary Notice of Fellow deceased. 



Friendly tradition, were careful to maintain. My impression is that less 

 stress was laid on doctrine, and I believe that my grandfather had, at the 

 time of the expected invasion of England by Napoleon, gone through some 

 training as a volunteer. 



From his early boyhood and throughout his life, my father was an 

 enthusiastic ornithologist. As a boy he used to wrap flannel round his 

 shoes and steal silently about the garden shrubberies, watching the birds 

 and learning the characteristic notes of the species. He pored over White's 

 ' Selborne ' and Bewick's ' British Birds,' and essayed himself to make wood- 

 cuts copied from the well-known beautiful illustrations of the latter work. 

 He used to recall the thrill of pleasure with which he received from his 

 father a set of proper engraving tools and some blocks of boxwood for this 

 purpose. Some of his copies of woodcuts are quite remarkably excellent 

 for a boy of 13. In later life, and until his hearing began to grow dull, my 

 father's power of recognising birds by their notes was most exceptional. 

 On country rambles with him one knew that, whatever topic was to the 

 fore, and however interested he might be in it, part of his mind was ever 

 keenly on the alert to the doings and songs of the birds. He would suddenly 

 stop, listening, and then he might resume his walk with the words, " Perhaps 

 only a yellow-hammer." But generally if he stopped there was something 

 of interest. " A cirl-bunting," he would exclaim, " a snipe drumming," or 

 " a grasshopper warbler " — or what not ? — and at once the telescopes of the 

 party would be turned to see the bird, if possible ; though verification by 

 sight was rarely necessary if he had heard the note distinctly. 



He .followed his brothers to the Friends' School at Hitchin, kept by Isaac 

 Brown, who, himself something of a naturalist, encouraged his taste for birds 

 and started him on a collection of mosses. I think it was from him that he 

 and his brother Joseph learnt to repeat Latin verses, in the old pronuncia- 

 tion of course, and with a majestic rhythm which I have never heard 

 equalled in the new. 



From Hitchin he went to the Friends' School at Grove House, Tottenham, 

 but it was not long before (at the age of 16) he was removed from school, 

 and according to the Friends' custom in those days, when University degrees 

 were not open to them, was " put into business." He was apprenticed to a 

 firm of manufacturing chemists. With them he learnt what he might, both 

 at their London place of business and also, what was much more to my 

 father's taste, at their nursery grounds at Ampthill, Bedfordshire. But, his 

 apprenticeship ended, he was placed by his father as partner in a wool 

 merchant's firm in Bradford — filling a vacancy caused by the retirement of 

 William Edward Forster, afterwards Member for Bradford and Chief 

 Secretary for Ireland. While working at Bradford he had bachelor lodgings 

 at Baildon and keenly enjoyed his wild rambles over the moors. While here 

 he read much poetry and other literature. He had a good memory for poetry 

 and knew a great deal by heart. Milton's sonnets and shorter poems were 

 favourites, and many of the poems of Burns, Shelley, and Moore. He knew 



