92 
MEJtom OP THE LATE JOHN SCALES. 
constantly perplexing tlie younger students of ornithology. 
Unfortunately the letter, though throughout expressing the writer’s 
admiration for Scales, and stating the pleasure with which a 
commission to procure for him a set of dissecting instruments had 
been executed, does not contain matter of sufficient importance from 
a naturalist’s point of view to justify the quotation here of any 
passages from it. A much longer letter from the same correspondent, 
dated at ^Voodbridge, April Gth, 1830, where and when he had by 
that time established himself in medical practice, on the recom- 
mendation, he says, of “my friend l\lr. Kirby of entomological 
notoriety,” is written in a similar spirit of gratitude to Scales, and 
is likewise full of ornithological gossip from which a few sentences 
may be quoted — the first indicating a change that has taken place 
in the avi-fauna of Korfolk, and the rest by no means devoid of 
interest : — 
“ Turtle-Doves are common here, not so in many j>arts of Norfolk. I shot 
one at Kelling last September — the first Girdlestone* had seen ... A 
friend of mine at Ely last year put a nest of 3 'oung Starlings in a cage, and 
allowed the parent birds to rear them. Their food principally consisted 
of great Dragon-flies, of which each young bird ate on an average 200 daily. 
No wonder they are big-bellied. I have been much disappointed at not 
getting more rarities this severe winter.f I am pretty well situated for 
Water-birds and Hawks. We have no Fieldfares, Redwings or Mountain- 
Finches in this neighbourhood, at which I wonder very much as the 
country is woody.” 
Then there comes a most characteristic letter from his old friend 
and associate Kobert Ilamond, written January 9th, 1831, at 
Hastings, where, attended by his sister, he was staying for the 
sake of his health, at that t’ime rapidly breaking up. f After 
describing the medical treatment to which he was then subjected, 
and this in cheerful terms, he says : — 
"... So you will see my time is well employed without the assistance 
of ornithology . . . With regard to ornithology, which is always upper- 
Inost in my thoughts, m^’ man has killed four of the Selninger [i.e. Purple] 
* For a notice of this naturalist see Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc; 
li. p. 389. 
t He names some of them in the former part of his letter, but an 
“Iceland Gull (young) ” is the only one worth noting here. 
X He died June 14th following. 
