architecture that this country can shew), he had bought
a few years before, and there ended his days in 1719.
At a very early age Mr. Powys manifested that
affection for animals which intensified as time went on,
and this shewed itself in the way usual among schoolboys,
so that at Harrow, whither he was sent, he was
not only a keen collector of zoological specimens, but
even kept a small menagerie, which (as he himself
told me) brought him more than once into trouble with
his masters. From Harrow was written his earliest
published note (Zoologist, page 2775), and there he
stayed until 1850, in which year he was placed with a
tutor at Geneva, with the result that he was the first
Englishman to give any information (op. cit. page 2968)
as to the breeding of the Rose-coloured Starling, though,
from what we now know, the instances of which he was
told by the Curator of the Museum at that place were
certainly abnormal. Early in May 1851 he left
Switzerland, and was entered at Christchurch, where he
speedily established a larger menagerie, which a few
months later comprised examples of nearly a dozen
species of Birds of Prey, beside other animals. He
continued contributing notes to ‘ The Zoologist,’ and it
was one of these that, in 1852, led to our correspondence,
which, though slackening at times, was kept up
until his death. As became his youth, he was sanguine,
and, as became his nature, unsuspicious; it must therefore
not be imputed as a fault to him, that then, and
even later, he accepted without hesitation much that
was told him as true but afterwards proved to be fictitious.
Indeed he, for many years, stoutly defended,
against my declared incredulity, the statement of a friend
who professed, with some circumstance, to have taken a
Shore-Lark on its nest near Exmouth *, and it was not
until toward the close of his life that he mournfully
owned that he had been deceived by his informant. I
record this incident not only because it was the beginning
of our intercourse, but because it was an early
instance of his characteristic fidelity to his friends.
During 1853 I had nearly a score of letters from him,
but though each shews his devotion to the field-study of
Bird and Beast,. I am bound to say that not one contains
matter of general interest, for he usually wrote in haste,
and did not stay to describe his doings in Scilly, Wales,
or Ireland, all of which he visited for the purpose of
making personal acquaintance with their animals. In
the same year too he first met the late Edward Clough
Newcome, the best falconer of his day, whose example
was not lost upon Mr. Powys, for he subsequently
became a staunch member of the Old Hawking Club,
beside keeping a falconer and many Hawks of his own.
In 1854 he again passed some time in Ireland, but
soon after, on the outbreak of war with Russia, the
Militia was embodied, and he joined that of his county.
However a barrack-life, whether in Dublin or at
# So certain was lie about it, that in 1853 my late brother
Edward went specially to the spot, where, it is needless to say, he
did not find any Shore-Larks; but there were Rock-Pipits.