1914- yioTVKT— Major G. E. H. Barrett-HaviiltoJi. 85 
been dropped in the pages of the Irish Naturalist^ in the 
course of his review of Lydekker's "Handbook" in the 
spring of 1895. 
It is by what he has given us of this book that Barrett - 
Hamilton will now be chiefly remembered. It began to 
appear in parts in October, 1910, and had only reached its 
fifteenth part when the series was cut short by the author's 
untimely death. We have, therefore, only the Bats, the 
Insectivora, and a small number of the Rodents, from 
which to estimate the merits and value of the work had 
it been completed by him. It has ceased just as it was near- 
ing the point where the author's greatest qualities would 
have been called forth in all their strength. He had to trace 
the past story of the Wild Cat, the Bear, and the Wolf, as 
well as to solve the ambiguous records of the Squirrel in 
Ireland and of the " Old English Black Rat " in the British 
Islands generally. He had to make intelligible to the general 
reader the fruits of his pecuharly close study of variation — 
especially geographical variation — among British Mice 
and Voles, and to give us a comprehensive view of the 
effect of what Mammals — both hving and extinct — tell us 
regarding the probable past history of these islands. The 
book would certainly have expanded in his hands to more 
than three times its present bulk, and would have increased 
in interest towards the end. But it is impossible to dip 
into any of the parts already before us without being struck 
with the extraordinary amount of research that has been 
bestowed on their preparation.'-^ 
In August last the fourteenth part of the " History of 
British Mammals " appeared with a touching obituary 
notice — doubly touching when re-read six months later — 
of the gifted artist of the work, Edward Adrian Wilson. 
The careers of the two men — the writer and the subject 
of the notice — had been curiously interwoven. " Author 
and artist " — as Barrett -Hamilton says in his apprecia- 
tion — "had at Cambridge attended the same lectures, 
frequented the same laboratories, and finished equal in 
* vol. iv., p. 92. 
- The publishers announce that Mr. M. C. Hinton of the British 
Museum has undertaken to complete the w ork. 
