1921 .] 
Obituary. 
317 
XVIII.— Obituary. 
Robert Birkbeck. 
We cannot pass over in silence the death of one of the 
original members of the Union, although he severed his 
connection with it so long ago as 1868. 
Robert Birkbeck, who died on 18 November last at the 
age of 83 at his house, Kinloch Hourn, in Inverness-shire, 
was born at Keswick in 1836, and was the fourth son of 
William Birkbeck, of Keswick Old Hall, Norfolk. He 
married in 1857 Mary Harriet, eldest daughter of the late 
Sir John William Lubbock, Bt., and was therefore a 
brother-in-law of the late Lord Avebury. He was also 
an uncle by marriage of Mr. J. H. Gurney. He took 
much interest in ornithology and was among the first to 
join the ranks of the Union when it was projected in 1858, 
though he resigned ten years later. He lived most of his 
life on his estate on the west coast of Scotland, and devoted 
liimself to horticulture and the study and protection of some 
of our rarer birds. 
A portrait of him as he appeared in his young days, with 
a short notice, will be found in the Jubilee Supplement 
volume of 4 The Ibis 3 for 1908. 
Charles Edward Eagan, C.B.E., I.S.O. 
Although not a member of the Union, Mr. Fagan, Secre¬ 
tary to the Natural ‘History Museum, South Kensington, 
whose death took place at his residence in West Ken¬ 
sington on the 30th of January, was well known to a large 
number of our members. In 1873, at the age of eighteen, 
Mr. Fagan entered the British Museum, Bloomsbury, as 
a second-class assistant, and on the opening of the Natural 
History Museum at South Kensington he was transferred 
to the office of Professor (afterwards Sir William) Flower, 
the newly-appointed director. In 1889 he became assistant 
secretary, and when Sir Sidney Harmer was appointed 
director in 1919 he was made secretary. 
