Abstract
EX-KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA, who died recently at Coburg at the age of eighty-seven, was born a prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. From early youth he had a passion for natural history ; but he was no mere amateur, and his studies of botany, entomology and ornithology were serious and scientific. Of the three, his chief interest lay in ornithology, and he first made his appearance among ornithologists at the age of thirteen, under the guidance of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, himself an ornithologist of repute. In 1887 Prince Ferdinand joined the Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft, of which Society he remained patron until his death ; in later years he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Hungarian Institute of Ornithology and also of the British Ornithologists' Union. In 1879 he made an official visit to Brazil the opportunity for studying the bird-life of South America, and on becoming Tsar of Bulgaria he gave every encouragement to the study of the ornithology of the Balkans and the collection of specimens. The museums and zoological gardens of Sofia are further and concrete evidence of his active interest.
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BARCLAY-SMITH, P. King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Nature 162, 520–521 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162520a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162520a0