MEMOIR OF THE LATE SIR EDWARD NEWTON, M.A., K.C.M.G. 409 
XU. 
THE LATE SIR EDWARD NEWTON, M.A., K.C.M.G. 
Very early in the current year of our Society, which is just coming 
to an end, we had to lament the loss by death of one of our most 
distinguished Members and a former President, Sir Edward Newton, 
K.C.M.G., who died at Lowestoft, on the 25th of April, 1897. 
Born on the 10th of November, 1832, at Elveden, in Suffolk, 
close to the Norfolk border, although thoroughly East Anglian, he 
had always a preference for the county of his birth, and it is 
probable that it was this preference which induced him to settle at 
Lowestoft, where the last years of his retirement were spent ; but 
he always took a keen interest in the affairs of the sister county. 
A boyhood, of necessity, owing to delicate health, spent much at 
home, and in a district in which many circumstances combined to 
create a paradise for the naturalist, added to the happy and congenial 
companionship of his elder brother, the present Professor Alfred 
Newton, doubtless tended to develop that intense love for out-door 
observation to which, through life, he was so devoted. He was 
a keen bird’s nester and collector of eggs, but not a plunderer of nests, 
and through the warrenors learnt the art of finding nests by watching 
the birds (such as Lapwings, Stone Curlews, Ring Dotterels, &c.), 
as they rose or ran from them. This art he adapted to other birds, 
and was especially successful in finding the nests of the Woodlark 
and heath breeding birds. To do this of course needed an intimate 
knowledge of the habits of the birds, and the writer has witnessed 
with pleasure his skill, and the keenness of his delight at finding 
year after year the nest of a rare and particularly shy little bird 
which he discovered breeding in an unsuspected locality, and the 
safety of which he so jealously guarded, that to speak of it in 
a voice beyond a whisper was treason. His Natural History notes 
contributed to ‘The Zoologist,’ commenced in 1845, at the early 
age of twelve years : he also not long after began a collection of 
birds’ sternums which by means of correspondents in all parts of 
the kingdom he carried on for ten years or more, at the end of 
which time he had those of uearly every species on the “ British ” 
