and lived in England. His wide experience and good judgment, as well as his great scientific knowledge, which gained him the fellowship of the Royal Society, were of the greatest advantage to me in my subsequent studies.
We found that Hooker’s Himalayan Journals, which had been published twenty-two years previously, was an admirable guide both as to the geography of the country, which he had mapped, and as to the botany and general features. I have used this book on four subsequent occasions with the greatest pleasure and profit, for though Hooker was primarily a botanist, he was an accurate observer and describer of everything of interest, unsurpassed by any naturalist whose works I have studied. His memory remained fresh among all the natives with whom he came in contact; and he left behind him a reputation which any man might envy. No one who has not followed his tracks in the early days when Sikkim had no made paths can realise his determination, industry and courage.
On his return from India Elwes was married, in April, 1871, at Elmore, Gloucester, to Miss M.S. Lowndes, second daughter of the late Mr. W.C. Lowndes, of Brightwell Park, Oxfordshire. He went to live at Miserden, a few miles to the west of his old home, in 1872, and devoted much of his leisure to the working up of his Sikkim collections. Reading widely for this purpose, he found that current theories did not fit his own observations in the field. In an elaborate paper, On the Geographical Distribution of Asiatic Birds, which he read before the Zoological Society on June 17, 1873, he defined what, in his view, were the true natural divisions for the avifauna of Asia. He showed, in particular, that the Himalo-Chinese sub-region, as he termed it, was a distinct and homogeneous tract extending from Kashmir right along the great Himalayan chain and across Southern China to the Pacific. While much of the detailed exposition is neces¬ sarily superseded, the paper still deserves to be referred to, as exemplifying Elwes’s fresh and vigorous intellect and his grasp of scientific principles.
Elwes also published in the Ibis a careful memoir, “A Revision of the Genus Henicurus” a beautiful and peculiar genus of birds—somewhat resembling the Wagtail—which is specially characteristic of the wooded gorges of mountains in the Himalo-Chinese region. But he did not continue these detailed researches.
When I settled down after my marriage (he wrote in later years), I found that it became difficult, if not impossible, to continue my ornithological work without constant access to the British Museum and to London libraries. As I had neither the means nor the desire to spend so much time in London as this would have entailed, I gradually ceased to pursue my ornithological studies and parted with my Indian collection.
But I did not lose my interest in the subject, and though I have no claim to be considered an up-to-date ornithologist, I have kept in touch with my older bird-loving friends at the meetings of the British Ornitho¬ logists’ Union, and have formed new friendships among the younger generation. And I may add that these early associations have been of immense value to my work in other branches of Natural History, on account of the exactitude and attention to detail in which the ornitho¬ logists have set so high a standard to other naturalists.
The only other journey I ever undertook with purely ornitho¬ logical objects was in company with the late Mr. Seebohm in Denmark.
