Obituary. 
355 
other works of importance, as well as sections or parts of 
general works that were then in progress. Thus in 1875 
appeared his section on a Birds " which formed part of the 
Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.Ss. ( Erebus' and ‘Terror/ 
under the command of Capt. Sir James Clark Boss, R.N., and 
his treatise on the class Aves in 6 Cassell's Natural History/ 
which was edited, in six volumes, by Professor P. Martin 
Duncan. Then came his Monograph on the Swallows, 
commenced with C. W. Wyatt in 1885. Between 1875 
and 1888, after the death of John Gould, extraordinary as it 
may appear, he actually found time to complete the beautiful 
folio works which Gould had left unfinished, such as ‘ The 
Birds of Asia/ ‘The Birds of New Guinea/ and the Mono¬ 
graphs on the Trogons, the Humming Birds, and the Pittas 
or Ground Thrushes—all admirably worked out on the lines 
indicated by Gould. Similarly in the case of Seebohm's 
‘British Birds' Eggs/ the plates of which had been prepared 
but the text was unwritten at the time of Seebohm's death in 
November 1895, Sharpe came to the rescue and completed 
the work, which was published in 1896. This was, perhaps, 
the least satisfactory of all his publications ; for, in the first 
place, he was handicapped by the fact (as stated in the 
Preface) that Seebohm “ had planned out and settled the 
order of the plates," with the result that he had to adopt a 
most confusing classification which he could not approve ; 
and, in the next place, he himself had not paid such close 
attention to British Oology as would enable him to do 
justice to the subject. The coloured plates are for the most 
part excellent, but the text was not up-to-date, even at the 
time it was written. 
Por several years, as recorder of the Class Aves, Sharpe 
undertook and accomplished an extraordinary amount of 
work for the ‘ Zoological Record/ which earned for him the 
universal appreciation and gratitude of ornithologists. Of 
his more popular publications mention should be made of 
the four small octavo volumes on ‘ British Birds' which he 
contributed to Allen's ‘ Naturalist’s Library ' (1894-97), and 
his ‘ Sketch-Book of British Birds/ with coloured figures in 
the text, published in 1898 by the S. P. C. K. In the same 
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