Mr. J. L. Chaworth-Musters

Abstract

JAMES LAWRENCE CHAWORTH-MUSTERS died on April 12. Born in 1901 at Annesley, Nottinghamshire, the son of a landowning family, the associations of his early youth with country life and pursuits led to an enduring interest in natural history, more especially in animals as living creatures. He was educated at Rugby and Caius College, Cambridge ; but lack of sympathy with studies in which animals are more often seen as dead objects for dissection in the laboratory than as living organisms, and the horizons opened to him through participation in an expedition to Jan Mayen in 1920, impelled him to cut short his academic career. The possession of property in Norway resulted in his spending much time there, and he became deeply interested in the faunai differences he observed as compared with Britain. This interest was widened as he studied the subject ; but he mainly concerned himself with mammals and birds, and commenced a serious study of the Palaearctic members of the groups at the British Museum (Natural History), with frequent field expeditions to collect and observe. His journeyings took him to Cyrenaica in 1926, the mountains of Greece in 1931, the U.S.S.R. in 1936, the High Atlas of Morocco in 1937 and Afghanistan in 1939 ; from all these expeditions he brought back new knowledge and additional material for study and to amplify the national collection.