PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
115 
Walsham Broad, and the other at Baitsbite, near Cambridge; a 
Crane, shot at Martharn in 1849 ; and a good series of about thirty 
Ruffs from Norfolk Fens, and an American Meadow Starling, shot 
at Thrandeston, in Suffolk. Devoted all his life to the study of 
zoology, his loss will be much felt by the small band of local 
naturalists of whom he was one. He was one of the oldest 
correspondents of the ‘ Zoologist,’ his first communication from 
Cambridge, where ho was at college, being dated 1844, and having 
reference to tho Water Rail. In tho natural history of his own 
county, and more particularly in its ornithology, he always took a 
great interest, and a bird show or a sale of birds was pretty sure 
to bring him to Norwich. Ho was always much interested in the 
Naturalists’ Society and in tho Museum, to which his last donation, 
made not long before his death, was an example of Spilomis 
pallidus. 
The Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society has lost one of 
its oldest and most useful members during the past year. The 
death of John Henry Gurney, on the 20th of April, 1890, will be 
profoundly regretted by every ornithologist, not only in Norfolk, 
but throughout the world, wherever ornithology is studied. 
A memoir and portrait will bo inserted in the 1 Transactions.’ 
Gurney was the great authority on the birds of prey, and chiefly 
owing to his liberality and untiring industry the collection of 
Diurnal and Nocturnal Birds of Prey in the Norwich Museum is 
unrivalled. His knowledge of these groups of birds was vastly 
in excess of that of any other ornithologist of this or any 
other ago or country, and the fact that he knew little or 
nothing of the morphology of these two great groups scarcely 
detracts from the relative greatness of his knowledge. The classi- 
fication of the Raptores and Strigcs is to all intents and purposes 
virgin ground. Mines of knowledge on this subject lie buried in 
the British Museum and elsewhere ; but nobody works at them ; 
they lie absolutely idle. The fields are white unto harvest, but 
the labourers are few. 
We have a great many ornithologists in the British Islands, but 
it is much to be regretted that they do so very little work, and 
