A CENTURY’S WORK ON ORNITHOLOGY IN 
THE KINGSBRIDGE DISTRICT. 
BY EDMUND A. 8. ELLIOT, M.R.C.8., M.B.0.U. 
(Read at Kingsbridge, July, 1897.) 
[Reprinted from the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advance- 
ment of Seience, Literature, and Art. 1897.—xxix. pp. 167-174. 
I HAVE attempted in this paper to show how much the 
Ornithology of the county is indebted to this immediate 
district for the records of many rare and interesting species 
of birds, and how the interest in this particular branch of 
Natural History may be distinctly traced to the influence of 
Col. Montagu, that father of British Ornithology, who lived 
and died here in the early days of the century. 
Col. Montagu was born in the year 1755 at Lackham 
House in North Wiltshire, and was one of a family of 
thirteen; he entered the Army, and served in the American 
Wars; he married at the early age of eighteen, and had four 
sons and two daughters; two sons were killed in action, and 
another died a prisoner of war in France. In 1797 Montagu, 
who had resigned his commission, came to reside at the 
Knowle, Kingsbridge, and devoted his whole attention to 
Natural History; not only birds, but beasts and fishes also 
—the books and papers that he wrote, and which are too 
lengthy to quote here, numbering a score or more, besides 
numberless records of rare species. No doubt the love of 
collecting was inherited by Montagu, for we learn the 
family house at Lackham was stored with a rich collection of 
curiosities, that a long day might have been well employed 
in inspecting old chests filled with the costumes and jewelry 
of different centuries, many such articles of each generation 
for some hundreds of years having been carefully stored up 
by the family. All these and the extensive estates also were 
dispersed by order of the Court of Chancery, on account of 
litigation between the Colonel and his eldest son; this, and 
