564 
Obituary. 
in 1859. He may be said to have passed almost his whole 
life in the Jardin des Plantes, where he was appointed 
deputy for his father in 1876. In 1891 he was elected 
Director of the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle and of the 
Menagerie, as already mentioned, and held these posts until 
his death on the 21st of April last. Milne-Edwards’s first 
work on Birds, published in 1866, related to the osteology 
of the Dodo, to which subject, as well as to the allied and 
other extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands, he paid 
considerable attention. But the great feat for which he 
must always deserve the gratitude of the students of this 
class of animals was his e Becherches Anatomiques et Pale- 
on tologiques pour servir a PHistoire des Oiseaux Fossiles de 
la France/ which was completed in four volumes in 1872. 
This excellent piece of original work will be found well 
spoken of in 'The Ibis 3 for 1866 (p. 413), and we quite 
coincide with what was there said of its great merits. 
Alphonse Milne-Edwards was also joint author, along with 
M. Grandidier, of the two volumes on birds which form part 
of the grand series of the latter’s ‘ Histoire Physique, 
Naturelle et Politique de Madagascar/ This portion of the 
work was finished in 1879, and is the chief authority on the 
members of that most strange and interesting Ornis. More 
recently (1893) he published, in conjunction with M. Oustalet, 
in the volume which commemorates the centenary of the 
foundation of the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris, a 
memoir upon birds now extinct of which specimens are con¬ 
tained in the Museum (see Ibis, 1894, p. 440). A reference 
to the General Subject-Index of ‘ The Ibis/ recently issued, 
will supply the titles of various other works of the deceased 
naturalist relating to the Class of Birds; but enough, we 
think, has been said to show that Alphonse Milne-Edwards 
during his busy life made many excellent contributions to 
our knowledge of the Class of Birds, on the osteology of 
which, indeed, he was one of our best authorities. 
