Dr. C B. Ticehurst

Abstract

BY the death of Dr. Claud Buchanan Ticehurst of Saxon House, Appledore, Kent, on February 17, in a nursing home at Hastings, the science of ornithology in general and the British Ornithologists' Union in particular have suffered a loss which it would be difficult to exaggerate. It will be still more difficult to fill the gap which his death will cause in the publication of the Union's journal-the Ibis-of which he had been the successful and zealous editor since 1931. From his youth Ticehurst was what we might call a born field-ornithologist, but it was at Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate studying medicine at St. John's College, that ornithology came to be the leading passion of his life under the happy guidance and encouragement of Prof. Alfred Newton, whose Sunday evening gatherings were an inspiration and a joy to so many, including such famous ornithologists of the old days as Canon Tristram, the Godmans, Sclater, Wolley, Lilford, Gurney, Salvin, Taylor, Eyton, Wollaston and many others. Ticehurst was one of the many young men of those days who received, so to speak, the accolade; and had it not been for the strenuous calls on a country practitioner's time there can be little doubt that he would have risen to the highest level of ornithological fame.