Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/369



near advent of the International Zoological Congress, to be held at Cambridge during the present month, renders it fitting that attention should be drawn to the important part which Cambridge played in training the first naturalists bred upon English soil. That the revival of learning trained the youth of this country to concentrate their thoughts upon the study of dead languages is, of course, an obvious commonplace; it would be a grievous mistake to infer from this circumstance that a spirit of higher research was wholly absent from the minds of the ambitious youths who gathered together at Cambridge to acquaint themselves with the truths of philosophy. Any such erroneous surmise is disproved by the work accomplished by William Turner, to whom the title of "Father of British Zoology" may fairly be applied. This voluminous writer was apparently a man of humble extraction,—one of a family of that name resident at Morpeth,—where his father carried on the trade of a tanner. It was in rambling in the copse woods near Morpeth that the future naturalist spent his early years, searching for birds' nests in the thickets, or listening to the winter songs of the Dippers (Cinclus aquaticus), as those sprightly birds Zool. 4th ser. vol. II., August, 1898.