newton] 
BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY 
443 
to complete Lis seventy-eighth year. He was one of a 
large family of brothers and sisters, and his father was the 
owner of the well-known estate of Elveden (called in those 
days “ Elden ”), on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, 
famous for its partridges. 
He was educated at home and at a private school ; but 
when he came to Cambridge as an undergraduate in 1848, 
he was already a thorough-going naturalist, both by nature 
and by habit. 
He was elected to the Drury travelling fellowship, for the 
sons of Norfolk gentlemen, at Magdalene in 1853, shortly 
after taking his B.A. degree, and went abroad for several 
years in pursuit of ornithological knowledge. Thus we find 
him the companion of John Wolley in Lapland during the 
summer of 1855. Again, in 1858, he accompanied his friend 
to the last home of the Great Auk, or “ Garefowl ” as he 
loved to call it, in Iceland. The last of his Northern excur- 
sions took place in 1864, when he accompanied Sir E. Birkbeck 
in his yacht to Spitsbergen. Meanwhile he did not neglect 
more southern climes, since he was in the West Indies in 
1857, whence he proceeded to the United States and Canada ; 
and again in 1862 he crossed the Atlantic, but he returned 
to England in January of the following year, the paper 
relating to his experiences at Madeira being dated “ Elveden, 
February 28, 1863.” 
The period of his extensive travels was over at the time 
that he was elected to the newly constituted Chair of Zoology 
and Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge in March 1866, 
a post he occupied with distinguished success for forty- 
one years. This event naturally acted as a stay upon 
his travels, and may be regarded as the turning-point in his 
career. 
No sooner was the B.O.U. founded at a meeting in New- 
ton’s rooms at Magdalene College, Cambridge, November 17, 
1858, than Alfred Newton became an important contributor 
to the Ibis ; a list of his contributions to that journal on 
British ornithology will be found below. 
