19 H yiowh!t.~ Major G. E. H. Barrctt-Hamilto7i, 83 
Glascott. He was indefatigable in seeking out other corres- 
pondents who shared his tastes. Ussher was soon as great 
an encourager as More. Before leaving Harrow he began 
(under the name " Lepus Hibernicus") to edit a natural 
history column in the Irish Sportsman, and tliis he con- 
tinued for several years, while pursuing his undergraduate 
course at Cambridge. A little book produced by him in 
1892 on "Harrow Birds" was the subject of the first 
review that appeared in the newly founded Irish Naturalist 
— written by the friendly hand of A. G. M. 
Entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890, Barrett - 
Hamilton immediately came under the notice of Professor 
Alfred Newton, who became one of his firmest supporters 
and more than once stated that he had never met with a 
young naturalist of greater promise. Another remark- 
able friendship which he formed at Cambridge was with 
Edward Adrian Wilson, destined to be the artist in later 
years of his " History of British Mammals," and sadly to 
perish with the other heroes of Scott's last Antarctic 
Expedition only a few months before Barrett -Hamilton 
himself sailed for the far south to a fate as deeply mourned . 
After graduating ist Class in the Natural Science Tripos, 
1894, Barrett -Hamilton helped to contribute a new sur- 
prise to the zoological world when, in 1895, he and Mr. 
Oldfield Thomas announced their discovery that the Stoat 
of Ireland was specifically distinct from that of Great 
Britain. In the spring of the same year a visit to Morocco 
attracted him to the study of geographical variation in 
the House-Mouse, and further stimulated him on the line 
of research that so strongly characterises his work. Then 
came his appointment (in 1896) as one of the two British 
Commissioners on the Bering Sea Fur Seal Commission, 
which occupied him for the greater part of that and the 
following year. By his observations on the Fur-Seals of the 
Pribilof Islands during the two long breeding seasons (1896 
and 1897) that he spent among them Barrett -Hamilton 
revolutionised many of the standard conceptions of the 
social life of the seal-community, and no writer on the 
