Abstract
BY the death of Mr. John Cordeaux, ornithology loses, not only one of its most ardent votaries, but one who had pursued, if he did not strike out for himself, a line very different from that taken by most British lovers of birds. For nearly six-and-thirty years, as shown by a long series of contributions, chiefly to The Zoologist, he applied himself to the study of the phenomena of bird-migration, at first as exhibited on the coasts of Lincolnshire (in which county he lived) and Yorkshire. This led him in the autumn of 1874 to go to Heligoland for the sake of comparing notes with the now well-known Herr Gätke, whom, it is believed, he was the first British ornithologist to visit; and he soon after wrote for The Ibis (1875, pp. 172-188) a notice of the very wonderful collection formed by that naturalist on that island. In 1879 he joined Mr. Harvie-Brown (who had just communicated a remarkable paper to the Natural History Society of Glasgow) in a successful attempt to procure observations on migrating birds from the keepers of lighthouses and lightships on the coasts of England and Scotland; and in the following year, when the results of their inquiry were brought before the British Association at the Swansea meeting, he was named secretary of a committee appointed to continue systematically the scheme which they had shown to be practicable. Of this committee, which (with a slight variation of title) has since been annually reappointed, he has always been the hardworking secretary, and it is not too much to say that nearly all its success is mainly due to him. He not only arranged with the authorities for the distribution of the schedules, instructions, and other information necessary for the observers, but, by his own efforts, raised by subscription a large sum of money to meet the expenses of the inquiry, which proved to be far greater than had originally been anticipated. The time and trouble which all this involved were at first enormous; and, even to the last, the correspondence which he had to carry on was immense, yet his services were as willingly rendered as though he had been handsomely paid for them, instead of giving them gratuitously, and the way in which he contrived to interest the men at the lighthouses and lightships in the undertaking was marvellous. The results of this labour, continued without intermission for nine years, were partly shown by the admirable “Digest of the Observations,” made by Mr. W. Eagle Clarke, which the committee was able to include in its report presented to the Association at Liverpool in 1896; and, as has been announced, that gentleman is still occupied in working out further details from the mass of materials that has been collected.
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N., A. Mr. John Cordeaux. Nature 60, 398 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060398a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060398a0