Notes

Abstract

BY the death of Mr. Henry Eeles Dresser, from heart failure, at Cannes, on November 28, at the age of seventy-seven, ornithology has lost one of its most distinguished students. Attracted to the study of birds from his early boyhood, Mr. Dresser devoted the leisure hours which he could spare from the arduous duties of a city life to the elucidation of the avifauna of the Palasarctic region, and gave up his well-earned holidays to extensive travel in Europe, Asia, and America in prosecution of his favourite study. He made his first contribution to scientific literature in the pages of the Ibis in 1865, and for a period of almost fifty years he continued to write on ornithological subjects in that journal and in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. His most noteworthy contributions to ornithology are, however, his “History of the Birds of Europe,” in eight quarto volumes, 1871–81, followed by a supplementary volume in 1895–96; “A Monograph of the Meropidse,” 1884–86; “A Monograph of the Coraciidæ,“ 1893; “A Manual of Palæarctic Birds,” 1902–3; and “The Eggs of the Birds of Europe,” in two volumes, 1910. For the purposes of these monographs he gradually acquired a magnificent collection of the skins and eggs of Palasarctic birds, now in the Manchester Museum, each specimen in which is fully authenticated and adequately labelled. The care with which he attended to these matters has rendered his collection one of the most valuable in the country. His work is marked by thoroughness, rigid accuracy of description, and careful attention to detail, while the coloured plates, made mainly from drawings executed by Joseph Wolf and J. C. Keulemans, illustrating his monographs are among the most beautiful and accurate in ornithological literature. Ornithology is indeed the poorer by his death.