XXII 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
neighbourhood of Formosa Point, and after the usual preliminaries 
Mr. Gould set out with the well-known Maidenhead fisherman, Harry 
Wilder, to capture it. All the evening, as he related to me, he 
threw his bait over and over again without success, and the night 
was closing in rapidly—in fact it became quite dark—and it was 
agreed to try one more cast before turning homeward. That last 
cast secured the fish, and, said Mr. Gould, “ we landed him safely; 
and there is his portrait, painted by Mr. Hart.” Nor was this the 
only trophy of the rod which was to be seen in his house, for there 
were paintings in various rooms of Mr. Gould’s house which repre¬ 
sented other fine captures, mostly from the Thames. One of his 
favourite fishing-grounds was the mill-tail of Mr. Yenables’s paper- 
mill, where he was always a welcome guest. It was outside 
Mr. Venables’s house that I first met Mr. Gould. I was returning home 
with some specimens of the chase, amongst which were some young 
of Pay’s Wagtails, when I was hailed by an elderly gentleman, who 
asked what I was going to do with my birds. “ Take them to Mr. Briggs 
to be skinned,” was my reply. At that time Mr. De Vitre lived at 
Formosa and Mrs. De Vitre was very interested in birds, a beautiful 
collection of which had been mounted for her by the head gardener, 
Mr. Briggs, one of the most thorough field-naturalists I have ever 
known. On the next evening, when I went down to Mr. Briggs’s 
cottage to see how the skins were getting on, he told me that 
Mr. Gould had been asking about me, and w r anted my Bay’s Wagtails 
for his collection. So I found out who my interrogator of the previous 
day had been, and it is needless to say that I was only too proud 
to think that I had shot some specimens which would be of use to 
such a well-known naturalist. After that we became quite friends, and 
I received an invitation to visit him in London, little thinking at the 
time that I should ultimately become an almost daily visitor at his 
house. The days of the British Museum, however, were then far 
off. I used always to let Mr. Gould know if any big fish was feeding 
