ports had been touched, and his notes on the latter refer
to little more than Andalusia and the neighbourhood of
Valencia, though these districts are among the richest
in the peninsula. Spain, as he subsequently wrote, had
been the subject of his youthful dreams by day and
night, and, after his previous agreeable experience, it
was only natural that he should renew his attempt to
become better acquainted with it—indeed it may be
truly said that, to the end of his days, his interest in
cosas de Espana, and especially its ornithology, never
slackened. Accordingly in the spring of 1865 he
returned thither, accompanied by Lady Lilford, and this
time obtained leave to carry on his observations in the
grounds of the Casa del Campo and of El Pardo—royal
domains near Madrid,—as well as subsequently at
Aranjuez and Sotomayor. Thence he proceeded to
San Udefonso and Segovia; but his hereditary enemy
pursued him, and for a great part of the time he was
unable to walk. The admirable narrative of his doings
may be read, and always with delight, in ‘ The Ibis ’
for 1865 and 1866, and not a little contributed to
his election—by acclamation it may be said—to the
Presidency of the British Ornithologists’ Union, when,
on the 27th of March, 1867, it was resigned by Colonel
Drummond-Hay.
It has seemed advisable to dwell on these earlier days
of Lord Lilford’s career, since they must be little
known to the ornithologists of the present time, and
in his efforts and example he was second to none in
obtaining for ‘ The Ibis ’ that high reputation which it
so speedily acquired and has so long sustained. His
enthusiasm never flagged, as his frequent communications
in later years testify; but his subsequent cruises in the
Mediterranean Sea (including three more visits to his
beloved Spain between 1866 and 1875), which made
him familiar with almost all the parts of its coast and
islands that were interesting to the ornithologist, and
extended to the shores if not the interior of Cyprus,
produced fewer novelties—the discovery in April 1879
of the most westerly breeding-place of Audouin’s Gull
being perhaps the chief of them.
These cruises did not, however, occupy the whole of
his time. Each recurring shooting-season found him
in this country, exercising hospitality either in his
Northamptonshire home or in Scotland, where he for
several years hired one of the finest deer-forests; and,
though often incapacitated by gout from taking to the
hills, he would listen with pleasure to his guests as they
recounted the varied events of the day’s work with gun,
rifle, or rod ; while, whenever his own condition permitted,
he proved himself as “ game ” a stalker, and as
successful, as if he had been in possession of the full use
of his limbs.
With all this devotion to sport he never allowed it to
interfere with the duties to which he was called by his
position, and of those duties he had an exalted idea.
Though he had little taste for politics, he did not neglect
duly to appear in his place in Parliament, and it was
with satisfaction that he used to recall his successful
addition of “ Owl ” to the Schedule of Birds to be