Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/12

iv Dr. Blanford died in 1905. For twenty-seven years he had been a member of the Indian Geological Society and had acquired a wide and deep knowledge of the geology of that great Empire. But he was a man of the utmost width of scientific interest. During his many journeys he kept a keen eye on the fauna of British India and it was this firsthand knowledge that enabled him so successfully to complete the great work begun by Mr. Gates. Dr. Blanford was an indefatigable worker and everything that he wrote was of the highest order of merit, marked by thoroughness and accuracy.

Mr. Gates survived his editor by six years. He had spent thirty-two years in the Public Works Department of India and had devoted all his spare time to the ornithology of British India. He was chiefly stationed in Burma and was undoubtedly the world's authority on the birds of that country. His "Birds of British Burma" in two volumes is still a standard work, though it has perhaps been to some extent replaced by his later work in "The Fauna of British India."

He is described by those who knew him as being a lovable but at times hot-tempered man; but officials who have spent a large part of their lives in the tropics are apt to be a little hot-tempered. The fact that Mr. A. O. Hume made over to Oates the whole of his notes and correspondence when the latter was preparing his work on "The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds" testifies to the high regard he inspired in his contemporaries. On his retirement he was requested by the Trustees of the British Museum to catalogue their large collection of British eggs, and he prepared a manuscript of four volumes, covering about 50,000 specimens. The first two volumes of this catalogue were issued during his lifetime.

Both he and Dr. Blanford are splendid examples of men carrying on thorough scientific work in the rare and sporadic intervals of exacting, official duties.