By the death of Mr. John Cordeaux this magazine has lost one of its oldest and most esteemed contributors. From April, 1864, to May of the present year there has appeared in our pages, from his pen alone, a series of zoological notes and observations that collected would be sufficient material for a fair-sized volume, and one that would, apart from its valuable contribution to avian migration, be a handbook to the natural history of Lincolnshire.
Mr. Cordeaux, who died at Great Cotes House, in Lincolnshire, on August 1st, at the age of sixty-nine, was one of the recognized field naturalists of the day, and was especially an ornithologist, and an authority on the birds of the county in which he lived. His 'Birds of the Humber District' was first published in 1873, and a new and revised edition to April, 1899, was noticed in our last issue. Formerly engaged in farming a portion of the Sutton estate, he had relinquished his agricultural pursuits and devoted the later years of his life to sport and natural history. It was to the phenomena of avian migration that he devoted much time, and he mainly helped to achieve the very considerable results that have already obtained to that branch of natural science. As early as 1874 he journeyed to Heligoland, and visited Gätke to compare notes on the subject which so interested both of them, and with which their names are so identified. In 1875 he published in the 'Ibis' a critical and descriptive notice of Gätke's wonderful collection of birds taken on what might well be called Gätke's Island. In 1879 a fresh impetus was given to the study when he joined Mr. Harvie Brown in a successful endeavour to enlist the services of the keepers of lightships and lighthouses along our coasts in making and recording observations as to the movements of our migratory birds. The Committee appointed by the British Association to further this undertaking, of which he was the hard-working
- ↑ According to the contents, page vi: written by William Lucas Distant (Wikisource-ed.).
