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THE ESSEX NATURALIST
There is a portrait of Edward Forster by Eddis which was
presented to the Linnaean Society in 1836 and which now
hangs in their meeting room at Burlington House, Picca-
dilly.
The naturalists we have considered so far have been
botanists or a combination of botanist and gardener, some
with interests in kindred subjects. If time still permits, we
should perhaps devote a few minutes to a naturalist whose
chief interest was entomological. Henry Doubleday was the
elder son of Benjamin Doubleday, a grocery, hardware and
provision merchant of Epping. He established his business
in 1770 in premises which had formerly been the Black Boy
Inn. He and his sons were members of the Society of
Friends. Henry was born on 1st July, 1808, and his brother
Edward three years later. So far as is known, neither of
the parents had any leanings towards natural history, and
it has been suggested that the sons' taste for the subject was
developed through having been brought up in the Epping
Forest area, which in those days was far more extensive
than now.
Edward Doubleday, who did not long remain at Epping,
eventually joined the scientific staff at the British Museum
and was secretary to the Entomological Society of London.
He died, a young man of 38, in 1849.
Henry was the stay-at-home, and he lived and died in the
house in which he was born. As a young man, with his
apron on, he was kept busy in his father's business, but
even so he managed to find considerable time for his natural
history pursuits, particularly ornithology. He was apparently
a first-class shot, and by the age of 23 had collected 153
species of birds which he preserved and set up for himself.
He was an excellent taxidermist, and many birds of his
collecting still exist in a first-class state of preservation; he
kept an aviary, and succeeded in keeping alive various of
our summer visitors, particularly the Warblers and some
Nightingales. He was the first observer in England to re-
cord the Little Ringed Plover, a species which a few years
ago made a considerable stir in ornithological circles when
it nested in several places in and around London. He also
first noted the Blue-headed Wagtail. He had some interest
in botany, for he contributed a note to the Phytologist on