Page:Auk Volume 13-1896.djvu/132

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"It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable, or un- reasonable, ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularization of science; to the development and organization of scientific education ; to the endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution ; and to untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as every- where else, and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science.

"In striving for the attainment of these objects, I have been but one among many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not remembered, as such."

Mr. Henry Seebohm, an Honorary Member of the American Ornithologists' Union, died at his home in London, Nov. 26, 1895, after a short illness, although he had been in weak health since an attack of

influenza some six months previously. According to a recent notice in the London 'Times,' Mr. Seebohm "came of an old Quaker family, and was born at Bradford, in Yorkshire, where as a child he showed an extraordinary love of natural history, and used to study every kind of animal which was to be met with on his father's property. He was educated at the Friends' School at York, where his love of nature still showed itself in the collections of ferns, birds, and their eggs, which he began to make at the time. For many years afterwards he was immersed in business at Sheffield, where he became very successful as a steel manufacturer; but all through his business struggles he never lost his attachment for ornithology, and made short expeditions to various parts of Europe to gain an original experience of the habits of birds for his ' History of British Birds,' which he had in contemplation. In the course of these studies he visited most of the countries of Europe, Greece, Asia Minor, Russia, Norway. Denmark, Heligoland, many parts of Germany and Austria, the Engadine, Holland, and parts of France. In company with Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown he undertook, in the summer of 1875, his celebrated expedition to the valley of the Lower Petchora, in northern Russia, in quest of the eggs of the Gray Plover and the Little Stint, both of which they managed to find, though they did not succeed in discovering the eggs of the Curlew Sandpiper. In 1877 he went alone to the valley of the Yenisei, in Siberia, and again obtained important ornithological results. On this occasion his ship was wrecked, and he built another, which he named the 'Ibis,' and in which he successfully returned to England by the North Cape."

In addition to numerous important papers in various scientific journals. Mr. Seebohm is the author of several monographs and faunal works of high value, among which are his 'Catalogue of the Turdidæ' (1881), forming Volume V of the British Museum Catalogue of Birds[1]; 'A His-

  1. Cf. Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club VII, pp. 99–104.