Abstract
THE ranks of naturalists have suffered a great -L loss through the death of Dr. J. A. Harvie-Brown, who took for many years an active and effective interest in ornithology and faunistic studies. He was born at Dunipace in Stirlingshire in August, 1844, and died there on July 26 last. He studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge, travelled widely in Norway, Russia, Transylvania, and elsewhere, and had a very intimate acquaintance with Scotland. A very active man in early life, and keen with his rod and gun, he was for many years unable to move about much, and was but little known, except by his writings, to the younger naturalists. To the end, however, he kept up his interests, and was a very good correspondent. His generous recognition of the work of other naturalists was very characteristic, and he was always ready to give assistance from his extraordinary store of information. He had a very high standard of precision and cautiousness of statement, and was not slow to winnow wheat from chaff, but there was always good-humour behind his tonic criticisms. Dr. Harvie-Brown had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of birds and their habits, and was particularly interested in problems of distribution and migration. His studies of the capercaillie, the squirrel, the fulmar, and so on are models of their kind. He was for many years one of the editors of the Annals of Scottish Natural History, and continued his assistance when that became, in 1912, the Scottish Naturalist. The number of articles and notes that he published in those journals and elsewhere was enormous. Dr. Harvie-Brown will be most remembered as the editor of, and chief contributor to, the well-known series of volumes on the “Vertebrate Fauna of Scotland.” Along with Mr. T. E. Buckley, he wrote the volumes on Sutherland, Caithness, and Cromarty (1887), the Orkney Islands (1891), Argyll and the Inner Hebrides (1892), the Moray Basin (1895), and he was alone responsible for that dealing with the Tay Basin and Strathmore (1906). The fine workmanship of these volumes is widely recognised. Dr. Harvie-Brown was a landed proprietor, and a good instance of the gentleman of leisure who worked hard at ornithology and came to have an expert knowledge of some of its aspects. In 1912 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Aberdeen in recognition of his contributions to a knowledge of the Scottish fauna.
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Dr. J. A. Harvie-Brown . Nature 97, 466 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/097466b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/097466b0