'WSPAPER. + 90.—Tuly 24, 1897. 
THE NATURALIST. 
a 
RECOLLECTIONS OF COLONEL MONTAGU. 
AKING REFUGE ONE DAY from the rain in a Devonshire 
eottave, wherea very old man was just finishing his humble mid- 
day meal, my eye fell upon a case of stuffed birds in a corner of the 
room. ‘‘ What have you there?” I asked. ‘‘ Oh,” said he, “‘ some 
birds that Gibbes, the Colonel’s man, stuffed for me.” ‘‘ Who?” I 
exclaimed. ‘‘ Why, the man who stuffed Colonel Montagu’s birds, 
he who lived to Knowle.” ‘‘ But surely you didn’t know Colonel 
Montagu ; he’s been dead more than eighty years.’ ‘‘ Well, and Ill 
be ninety-six come Michaelmas; and I worked for the Colonel and 
put the glass in all his cases for him, for I was apprentice to Mr B., 
the painter, and livedto West Alvington.”’ 5 
The old man being fairly started I allowed him to run on in his 
own way, and, whilst I marvelled at my old friend’s vivid memory, I 
yet seemed to be listening to a voice from the graye. ‘‘The Colonel 
(he said) used to shoot over Bowringsleigh, «11 through the woods 
there, and he often used to come into the workshop, with his gun and 
dogs, to tell me there was a case ready for the glass to go in.”’ 
“What dogs had he got ?’? Lasked. ‘‘ Alwayssix or seven spaniels, 
the same size and colour, and he was very proud of his gun, which he 
ca.ted his little Joe Manton.” 
‘“ What sort of personage was the Colonel ?” 
**A fine upstanding man, rather stout, very genial, and a good 
word for everybody ; he was a peculiar man and had peculiar tastes ; 
the paper cn the staircase at Know?e, I had never seen anything like 
before or since. He used to attend service sometimes at our church, 
where I used to sing in the choir and play the fiddle. J remember 
his saying to me one movning, ‘I heard your voice in church 
yesterday and you sang very well.’ His house was full of curiosities, 
and he had live birds all over the grounds; he took me down to the 
pond one day, where he had gulls. ducks, and a!l sorts of swimming 
birds; one of the gulls formerly belonged to the Rev. Mr V., who told 
the Colonel that one day he saw the gull swallow a whole brood of 
young ducklings on his pond, but that he had run out from the house, 
caught the gull up by the legs, and shook them all out again, and that 
they swam away as it nothing had happened ; ‘ but you don’t believe 
that, Henry, do you? because I don’t,’ said Montagn.”’ 
““Do you remember any of the family?’’ because one son died a 
prisoner of war in France and two were killed in action, the youngest 
at the battle of Albuera. ‘‘ No,’’ was the reply, ‘‘I can’t say I 
remember any of them.” 
‘* The Colonel died, I believe, from lockjaw ?’’? ‘‘ Yes; there were 
some repairs being done to the house and a lot of old timber was 
laying about; he trod ona rusty nail, which, entering the foot, pro- 
duced lockjaw, and he died in three days.”’ 
‘“ Where was he buried ?”’ ‘I don’t remember, but I helped to 
make the lead she'1 for his coffin.” 
Here I may state there is uncertainty. It is said that Montagu 
was buried in Kingsbridge Church, and there is a legend to the effect 
that when that church was restored in 1862 all the coffins in the 
church were ripped up, the lead stolen, and the contents thrown 
sacrilegiously ito any convenient hole. When Montagu’s coffin was 
reached, it was said to have been the most difficult of all to open, and 
fora moment after it was opened the features and outlines of the 
body were perfectly distinct, but instantaneously faded into dust. 
No stone exists in the church that I can find, neither does the parish 
register contain any entry of burial. 
I then inquired, ‘*‘ Did you ever shoot any birds for the Colonel ?”? 
‘““No, but my brother did, and he used to go out with the Colonel, 
who was a capital shot.’’ 
At this point of our conversation there were signs that I was 
delaying my old friend’s afternoon siesta, and, as the shower had 
given way to a sweltering sun again, I took my leave with much 
respect for one whose memory had served him so long and so well. 
With ornithologists, of course, the name of Montagu is a household 
word, His life was an eminently useful one, as briefly given in the 
Dictionary of National Biography, and in a memoir written by W. 
Cunnington for the Wiltshire Natural History Society in 1863, to 
which sources of information the reader may be referred. 
BE. A. 8. Exuior, 
