120 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
November, 1922' 
Mr. Illidge was born in London, and came to Australia 
as a boy with his parents, arriving in Sydney in 1857. 
In 1859, when the lad was nine years of age, he was 
brought to Moreton Bay, then the centre of a struggle for 
separation from New South Wales; and here he has been 
ever since. The leaning towards natural history must have 
come to Mr. Illidge early ; he remembers that when he did 
not happen to be picked for a cricket or football team, a 
run out to Kelvin Grove was the great solace. About 1865 
he spent six months or so on Clifton sheep station, Darling 
Downs, where he was made interested in birds. This 
interest brought him into touch with Diggles, Coxen, and 
other pioneer ornithologists. In later years Mr. Illidge 
learned to prepare specimens in a masterly manner, and 
his numerous trips about the South Queensland scrubs 
gave him a good general knowledge of the birds there, a 
knowledge that he has ever been willing, in his unobtrusive 
way, to draw upon for the benefit of others. 
Mr. Brenan, a native of Sydney — the son of a Crown 
Prosecutor in New South Wales — came to Brisbane as a 
youth of sixteen in the year 1872, and has since had an 
interesting career as Chief Immigration Officer for Queens- 
land. He has never aspired to be anything in the nature of 
a cabinet or scientific naturalist, but he is one of the best of 
field observers, and during the course of many sporting 
and other trips afield, in widely varying parts of Queens- 
land. he has picked up a wealth of Nature knowledge which 
a remarkably retentive memory enables him to store. A little 
lecturette, into which he was coaxed last year, on “Queens- 
land ’s Game-Birds 7 7 was full of original matter. Mr. Brenan 
was slightly acquainted with such notable “old-timers 77 as 
Coxen, Cockerell, and Waller. 
Mr. Try on, like the others, needs little introduction to 
this audience. The' son of an old English family, and a 
nephew of Lieutenant O’Bree, of II.M.S. Rattlesnake , he 
went to New Zealand at an early age, and, after acquiring 
a good grasp of the natural history of that country, 
arrived in Queensland in 1883. I 11 the course of a long 
career as Government Entomologist, Mr. Try on has 
acquired also a sound knowledge of Queensland birds, 
which lias frequently been at the disposal of his depart- 
ment, the Royal Society, the old Natural History Society 
(of which he was president, and Mr. Illidge secretary, in 
1892), the Field Naturalists* Club, and other bodies. He 
did much in encouraging and assisting Kendall Broadbent 
in the production of his papers, a fact which is freely 
acknowledged in the articles referred to. And even now, 
