2 4-
THE BIRDS OF ESSEX.
Sudbury in 1801. His early education was limited, and he was
by trade a draper, but his tastes and pursuits were of a useful
and refined character. The elevation of the working classes con-
stituted the chief aim of his life, and was the work to which he
devoted most of his leisure time, though he also took a great interest
in the welfare of the Mechanics' Institute, the British Schools, the
Hospital, the Museum, and other public institutions belonging to his
native town, where the whole of his life was spent. For many years,
too, he took a very warm interest in the study of natural history,
especially ornithology, and to these pursuits much of his attention
was directed. He was a very clever bird-stuffer, and was thus able
to form a large and valuable collection of British birds, which, at his
death, became the property of his nephew, Mr. John Grubb, of
Birmingham, and is now preserved in one of the rooms of the
Library adjoining the Friends' Meeting-house in that town. It
comprises about 250 specimens, preserved in separate cases, and
is still in excellent condition. It is much to be regretted that,
as the collection was made before the days of modern precise
ornithology, the locality, date, and sex have in no case been affixed
to the specimens, and the value of the collection is thereby greatly
lessened. Still, there is no doubt that the great majority of the
specimens were obtained in the immediate vicinity of Sudbury
—indeed, with the help of his List of Sudbury Birds it is not
difficult to arrive with fair certainty at an idea of the particulars
of some few of the specimens, as will be seen hereafter.
This list (20), which is now very scarce, originally appeared in
Fulcher's Sudbury Magazine for the year 1838 (p. 126), and was after-
wards reprinted separately in the shape of a three-page quarto tract,
in double columns. It is simply signed " K," and enumerates 130
species, some of which were observed, but not obtained. The only
separate copy I know of was in the possession of the late Canon
Babington, to whom I was indebted for the loan of it and the know-
ledge of the work in which it originally appeared—knowledge which
that gentleman himself does not appear to have possessed when
he published his Birds of Suffolk (46. 6). Many extracts from the
list appear in the following pages. Some of these, of course, relate
to occurrences in Suffolk, but as Sudbury is only separated from
Essex by a narrow stream it seemed absurd to exclude these.
Another publication of his was a paper On the Study of Natural
History, read at the Sudbury Mechanics' Institute, on March 16th,
1849, and afterwards published by J. Wright, of Sudbury, price 4d.
It is a closely-printed octavo pamphlet of twenty-eight pages. There