booth] 
BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY 
83 
tlie only son of Edward Booth, of St. Leonards, a man of 
independent means who left his son so well provided for 
that he was able to devote his whole attention to bird collect- 
ing. He was first sent to a private school at Brighton, and 
afterwards to Harrow, which he left in 1860 for Trinity 
College, Cambridge. He is said to have learned the art of 
taxidermy from Kent, a bird staffer and barber at St. 
Leonards. His earliest hunting-grounds were the marshes 
near Rye, in those days practically unexplored by the orni- 
thologist, but later the Scottish Highlands and the Norfolk 
Broads became his favourite collecting areas. His great 
ambition was to set up his specimens exactly as in their 
natural surroundings, and in this connection he spared 
neither trouble nor expense. He went to live in Brighton 
in 1865, but by 1874, his house in Vernon Terrace proving 
too small for his collection, he selected the locality of. Dyke 
Road, and built a house there with a museum adjoining. 
An unfortunate accident, causing partial paralysis, was 
the ultimate cause of his death, which took place February 8, 
1890. He left no children, and his museum was bequeathed 
to the Corporation of Brighton on the express understanding 
that they would not alter the interior of the cases, and that 
they would take the same care of them that he had hitherto 
done. His widow soon after added not only a further number 
of uncased specimens, but also her husband’s ornithological 
books and his gun and gunning punt. Further Sussex birds 
have also since been added from the Borrer collection and 
other sources. The plates in Booth’s great work, the Rough 
Notes , were, it should be stated, drawn by Neale from the 
cased specimens in the collection. Of the Descriptive Cata- 
logue several editions have appeared, and it contains his 
personal observations, but the localities are stated to be not 
always reliable, a different locality in the same county having 
frequently been substituted by him for the true one. 
[n.d.] Catalogue [of birds in his collection]. Brighton : n.d. 
Collation — 8vo pamphlet, 16 pp. 
1876. Catalogue of the Cases of Birds in the Dyke B-oad Museum, Brighton, 
