neighbourhood of Formosa Point, and after the usual preliminaries
Mr. Gould set out with the well-known Maidenhead fisherman, Harry
Wilder, to capture it. AH th e evening, as he related to me, he
threw his bait over and over again without success, and the night
was closing in r a p id ly - in fact it became quite d a r k - a n d it was
agreed to try one more cast before tu rn in g homeward. Th at last
cast secured the fish, and, said Mr. Gould, “ we landed him safely;
and there is his portrait, painted by Mr. H a rt.” Nor was this the
only trophy of the rod which was to be seen in his house, for there
were paintings in various rooms of Mr. Gould’s house which rep re sented
other fine captures, mostly from the Thames. One of his
favourite fishing-grounds was th e mill-tail of Mr. Yenables’s paper-
mill, where he was always a welcome guest. I t was outside
Mr. Yenables’s house th a t I first met Mr. Gould. I was returning home
with some specimens of th e chase, amongst which were some young
of R ay ’s Wagtails, when I was hailed by an elderly gentleman, who
asked what I was going to do with my birds. “ Take them to Mr. Briggs
to be skinned,” was my reply. A t th a t time Mr. De Yitré lived°at
Formosa and Mrs. De Yitré was very interested in birds, a beautiful
collection of which had been mounted for her by the head gardener,
Mr. Briggs, one of the most thorough field-naturalists I have ever
known. On th e n ex t evening, when I went down to Mr. Briggs’s
cottage to see how the skins were getting on, he told me th a t
Mr. Gould had been asking about me, and wanted my Ray’s Wagtails
for his collection. So I found out who my interrogator of the previous
day had been, and it is needless to say th a t I was only too proud
to thm k th a t I had shot some specimens which would be of use to
such a well-known naturalist. After th a t we became quite friends, and
I received an invitation to visit him in London, little thinking a t the
time th a t I should ultimately become an almost daily visitor a t his
house. The days of the British Museum, however, were then far
off. I used always to let Mr. Gould know if any big fish was feeding
off my brother-in-law’s, Mr. James Burrows’s, grounds a t “ The Elms,”
which are situated on th e upper p a rt of th e mill-stream a t Cookham;
and many a time, when we have been walking by th e side of th e
river in the evening, we have seen the lig h t of Mr. Gould s cigar
on Odney Common, where, after his wont, he was studying quietly
the feeding-grounds of some trout.
After I came to London I used to meet Mr. Gould continually a t
the Zoological Society’s meetings and also a t his house, when he lent
me many specimens of Kingfishers for my Monograph. I n 1875
he finished the second edition of his ‘Monograph of th e Trogons,’
which he had begun in 1858, and he also commenced his ‘ Birds of
New Guinea.’ By this time Mr. Gould had become somewhat of
an invalid and his faithful secretary, Mr. Prince, had died, so th a t
he often asked me to help him in th e preparation of his works.
Of the ‘ Birds of New Guinea,’ eleven p a rts were finished a t th e
time of his death, and I have since completed this and the ‘ Birds
of Asia,’ as well as th e Supplement to the ‘Monograph of th e
Humming-Birds,’ which Gould had commenced in 1880. A single
p a rt of a ‘Monograph of the Pittidce, or Ant-Thrushes of th e Old
World,’ which Mr. Gould brought out in th e same year, is th e only
one of his works which has not been completed, the plates being in
almost every case reproductions of those in th e ‘ Birds of Asia,
all th e stones of these birds having been retained for a reproduction
in a monograph.
In manner Mi*. Gould was always somewhat brusque, b u t those
who were intimate with him were aware th a t under a rough exterior
he concealed a very kind heart. A friend who knew him well
writes to me :—“ H e had a really tender and affectionate heart,
hidden though it was beneath a highly sensitive reserve, which never
permitted him the relief of expression. The deaths of his loving