NOTICES OF ESSEX ORNITHOLOGISTS. 9
written and edited many books, including a Glossary of the Cleveland
Dialect, and a History of Cleveland. He has also written The Walks,
Talks, Travels, and Exploits of Two Schoolboys (1859), and other
popular works on Natural History, including the Nests and Eggs of
British Birds (36), a charming little book, which has gone through
several editions, and is still one of the most popular works on
ornithology in the English language ; few, if any, books have in
their day done more to popularise that science. A threepenny edition
of it appeared in 1885. It contains numerous reminiscences of his
early days, spent among the birds on the Essex saltings. The town
of Elmdon, described in Walks and Talks (pp. 1-18), possesses con-
siderable local interest for Essex people, although it has no connec-
tion with the Essex village of that name. In writing the book, Mr.
Atkinson says in a letter to me : " I drew largely on my recollections
of Kelvedon and of my school life and exploits there, and some of
the scenery and places described, such as Docwra's Mill, Watery
Lane, and the Stream, certainly had a Kelvedon origin, as also had
the twelve daily coaches up to London, the flocks of geese along the
roads, the school ghost, the coaches full, inside and out, a little
before Christmas, with game, turkeys, &c, and many other scenes
and incidents all through the book ; but the moorland, and all that
pertains thereto—water-ouzels, trout-fishing, golden plover's nests,
and the like—have no connection whatever with Kelvedon."
Chapter xix., too, contains a graphic account of a walk on the
Essex Marshes, and of a day's wild-fowl shooting on the Main, round
the Wigboroughs arid Mersea.
In 1887 Mr. Atkinson received the honorary degree of D.C.L.
from the University of Durham, " in recognition of his services
in many branches of literature." He has filled several important
local offices, and is now engaged upon a volume of his Recollec-
tions.
ATKINSON, Rev. John (1786 ?-1870 ?), was a son of
the Rev. Christopher Atkinson, fellow and tutor of Trinity Hall,
Cambridge, who was an excellent ornithologist. Some water colour
paintings of British Birds, done by him, and now in the possession
of the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, are described by the latter as being, he
imagines, " quite unequalled for beauty, delicacy of finish, and life-
likeness." He married a sister of Sir John Leycester, afterwards
Lord de Tabley. The Rev. John Atkinson became curate of Gold-
hanger about 1810, and was afterwards curate of Great Wigborough,
Little Wigborough, Peldon, and elsewhere in Essex. He was, in the