The Shining Sunbeam—a hummingbird of the Colombian Andes

 

This Shining Sunbeam hummingbird shows why its name is appropriate. The iridescence from those feathers on its back have to be seen to be believed. We were at Hacienda El Bosque, a popular birding lodge at an altitude 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) almost at the highest point of a pass over the Cordillera Central of the northern Andes. There are feeders to attract all sorts of birds and this hummingbird is just one example. It is difficult to imagine the whole lodge and its series of bird arenas was built as diversification by the owners from being reliant on dairy farming (now moving over to beef).

The Shining Sunbeam (Aglaeactis cupripennis) is a montane species. It occurs at altitudes between approximately 6,000 and 14,000 feet or 2,500 to 4,300 metres along the Andes from Colombia, through Ecuador to Peru.

A seemingly monotonously coloured hummingbird in flight it only displays its colours when its back is facing the observer. But even then I saw occasions when one of them was sitting on a twig without the feathers on the back being raised. I have found no reference as to whether this incredible display can be turned on and off by altering the angle of the feathers. The direction of the sun of course affects the iridescent colours that are seen. The sexes are alike.

Very defensive of their food source they are constantly seeing off other hummingbirds but yielding to larger species.

What a bird! — was heard more than once.

Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949). Collector of specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. Part Five: 1910-11—Off the coast of Africa in HMS Mutine

Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949) was a highly-praised collector for the Natural History Museum in London as well as an all-round naturalist. Counting just birds he added over 10,000 specimens to the Museum. Lowe wrote two books on the various expeditions of which he had been part and there are summaries available online on what he did and where he went. However there is little of his life and background. He travelled with interesting, important and infamous people in pursuing the zoology of the day. In an endeavour to provide a fuller picture of Lowe I have scoured family trees (often inaccurate or incomplete), original material available on genealogy websites (again thanks to clerical errors sometimes inaccurate) and the like. There are still important gaps and I hope readers will contact me if they have more information. To make that job more manageable, I am splitting Lowe’s life into parts. This is the 5th part. Links to the other articles can be found at the end.

 

Not 1910 but April 2025. The view Willoughby Lowe would have had of Cape Town
and Table Mountain to sail north

On Guy Fawkes Night 1910, the Union-Castle liner RMS Walmer Castle left Southampton bound for South Africa. Willoughby Lowe was setting off for his first ‘official’ collecting trip for the British Museum (Natural History). Furthermore he was doing so in order to join a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Mutine, at the invitation of its captain, Captain Ernest Charles Hardy RN (1866-1934) who had an interest in natural history. HMS Mutine—an unfortunate name perhaps for a naval vessel perhaps—was one of a line of ships of that name, the original having being captured from the French during the Napoleonic Wars, coincidentally by another Hardy, Lieutenant Thomas Hardy, later immortalized by Nelson’s dying words “Kiss me Hardy”. This Mutine (1900-1932), a sloop, became a survey ship in 1907. On this voyage Mutine was to do a magnetic survey of coastal waters on the western side of Africa from Cape Town to Sierra Leone.

RMS Walmer Castle

HMS Mutine

Earlier in 1910 Willoughby Lowe’s third child and second son, John Patrick Willoughby Lowe, was born, not in the family house ‘Gorsemoor’ on the edge of Dartmoor but in Bournemouth. It appears that the Lowes had rooms at a property in Bournemouth since on 2 April 1911 (when Willoughby was shown on board HMS Mutine) the Census recorded Annie living in three rooms at 6 Richmond Hill along with her daughter, the eight-month old John and a servant. The Lowe’s other son was a boarder at Downside, the Roman Catholic school in Somerset. There was clearly a connexion with Bournemouth since Annie’s aunt (Charlotte Aikenhead, a widow) lived there and both Annie and John were with her for the 1921 Census.

Willoughby Lowe described his trip in the Trail That Is Always New. He covered the birds he had seen off the coast of South Africa, producing a list almost identical to that we had seen from the Hebridean Sky last April. Hardy met him in Cape Town where they spent a few days as tourists and getting the permits necessary to shoot wildlife. Accommodation for both people and goods on the small warship was tight and Hardy lent Lowe his cabin together with its chests of drawers for the storage of specimens.

London was short of birds of the South African coast and Lowe soon set about his work. He took a rowing boat out and was able to get gulls, terns, petrels, a shearwater, cormorants, gannets, albatrosses and penguins.

On 30 November Mutine sailed for Ichaboe Island off the coast of what was then Namibia. This small island lies in the nutrient-rich (and bitingly cold) Benguela Current and is, therefore, an important for nesting seabirds. In 1910 it was under British control and administered from South Africa. The reason it came under British control in 1861 is the ‘Great Guano War’.  In 1828 guano deposits over seven metres deep were discovered and a rush to gather the guano and ship it off for vast profits reached a peak in the 1840s. There were shanty towns for thousands of diggers, and hundreds of ships offshore. Competition was fierce and there was murder most foul. Two British warships were sent to sort things out. Ichaboe has been a nature reserve since 1987 and part of Namibia since 1994.

Luderitz in 2025

Lowe made a mistake in describing this part of the voyage. The sea was rough and for a decent night’s rest the ship took shelter in a harbour. Lowe called it ‘Swakopmund’ but that town is over 250 miles north of Ichaboe. From the description and name in Portuguese it was clearly the German town of Lüderitz. He also noted that before reaching Ichaboe he had 37 large birds skinned and preserved—scraping fat and oil from the skins took hours on the rolling ship.

In order to land on Ichaboe visitors from the Mutine had a take a ‘surf-boat’ which is carried on the crest of an incoming breaker and thrown onto the shore. All the passengers had to leap out and pull the boat up the beach before the next breaker arrived. He did not say how the surf boats got them off.

Ichaboe was packed with nesting birds. Much to the surprise of the man in charge Lowe had a permit to collect but not to shoot. He soon filled a large basket with birds and eggs. Walking was highly unpleasant because of the guano dust—so unpleasant and thick that the officers left ashore at night to take star sights could not see the stars, although the fogs that develop along this coast would not have helped.

While shooting was banned on Ichaboe, Lowe decided that trapping was not and thereby caught a pair of White-breasted Cormorants. He also noted that penguin eggs make good eating and that eggs from Dassen Island off the coast of South Africa generated an income of £25 per week—a huge sum in the 1840s—for the sellers.

After Ichaboe the ship headed for another bird-rich island, Mercury, but the sea was too rough for a landing but did manage to visit another one, Hollam’s Island. Then it was into Walvis Bay, then Walfisch Bay and a British enclave surrounded by the German colony. Walvis Bay was then very different from the prosperous port we have visited twice, in 2004 by land and in 2025 by sea. Lowe wrote:

There were a few iron shanties on the dreary waste of sand, a German store and a church whose foundations were the most unusual I have ever seen; they were entirely composed of whisky bottles…

Walvis Bay has a lagoon and a spit of sand that are full of birds. Lowe took the German storekeeper with him in the mistaken belief that he would be good with guns. However, using Lowe’s shotgun he fired both barrels at the same time. The kick was so fierce that the stock hit his nose and made it bleed. Having boasted that Germany would soon be at war with Great Britain and that Walvis Bay would be quickly taken (he was right but then Germany lost not only Walvis Bay but the whole of their colony) Lowe seems to have regarded the storekeeper’s bloody nose as a case of ‘Oh dear; What a pity; Never mind’.

Lowe only found Lesser Flamingos in residence. In 2004 there were Greaters with a few Lessers. In April 2025 there was  just a small flock of Greaters. In addition to flamingos Lowe shot pelicans, terns, skuas, avocets, gulls and plovers. He also grumbled how the fine sand worked its way into the mechanism of his gun and about the smell of the place. Its name gives the clue: the whole place smelt strongly of whales with carcasses left decaying on the beach. Part of that beach now contains a terminal for large cruise ships as well as for our very small one.

Greater Flamingos in the lagoon at Walvis Bay April 2025

Some of the whales which gave Walvis Bay its name were seen from Mutine. He had never seen a whale breach before:

I had never realised how active these creatures were, nor would I have believed that an animal weighing so many tones would have cut such capers.

Angola was next; they arrived on 13 December. HMS Mutine docked without the usual formalities because Angola was in the aftermath of the coup in Portugal which overthrew the monarchy. Lowe was going around the harbour in a boat shooting more cormorants and two larks. The he found some old Portuguese sailors who spoke some Spanish. Lowe had acquired sufficient of that language during his years in Colorado to have a conversation and they all ended up setting off into the hills on a collecting expedition. Shrikes, hornbills and parrots made their way to London as skins.

A day was spent on the island of Annobon, then Spanish. where Lowe obtained a specimen of the endemic paradise flycatcher. They left on 18 December for Sekondi in what is now Ghana, a place visited by Lowe on his first and last collecting trips as an official collector. Five days late HMS Mutine moved to an area off the coast of Liberia for survey work. They anchored a long way off shore ‘so as to be free from mosquitoes’. Lowe found the day-and-night process of depth sounding trying:

It is surprising how monotonous the heaving of lead becomes, as one hears the record shouted out hour by hour and day by day; the sample of the sea bed is brought up on a disc of soap, and the result is entered in the log-book, so many fathoms, sand, shell or rock as the case may be. It is extraordinary how long it takes even with machinery to wind up the plummet in really deep water. Then there were the small boats and launches, which went amongst the dangerous reefs in shallow water. This was very trying work in the full heat of the tropical sun, on this surf-beaten shore, but most necessary as this coast had never been properly charted. I always had to go ashore very early, either in one of these boats or with a "tide watcher," who also had rather a dull job, watching the rise and fall of the tide on a pole.

     We had specially made boats, which are always used on the West Coast to land amidst the breaking surf; the landing here is always exciting for there are generally submerged reefs, partly or completely hidden by the water. We had a native Kru man to pilot us in until we knew the course well; it is wonderful how these men will land in only a frail dugout canoe whilst they paddle and keep time to some native chant.

Lowe landed at a time the Kru were at war with the Liberian government, the former resenting repatriated former slaves taking over swathes of their land. Lowe found it astonishing when shown the demands being made for ‘peace’ by the government that freed slaves should be demanding slaves. Because of the ‘war’ the sound of Lowe’s guns caused all sorts of panic. They did, however, help remove a snake from a house.

His collection was not confined to birds. A local fish trap had some strange fish and by swapping tobacco they were off to the Museum. Described by Boulenger as Polypterus lowei, the species has since been lumped into P. palmas, the Shortfin or Marbled Bichir, often these days seem in tropical fish shops.

Back on board, Lowe prepared the skins from his extensive collection. However, he had problems from an unexpected direction. He worked at night on a table under a ‘powerful electric light’. Petrels, attracted by the light, settled on the table. He selected specimens from the three  species landing and launched the rest back into the air. But they kept returning and when handled emitted their foul smelling oil in protest.

The final place for survey work was Axim in what is now Ghana. Sixteen days were spent there and Lowe remarked but on the beauty of the Emerald Cuckoo. Then, on 28 February 1911, Mutine set off for the return voyage, calling at Luanda and Lobito in Angola, and Walvis Bay for coal on the way to the naval base at Simon’s Town. He left Simon’s Town on 10th April. Hardy must have jumped the gun a bit in filling in the census form due on 11 April. Lowe wrote:

It was with many regrets that I sided with goodbye to the Mutine and her officers, who had been so helpful and kind during my pleasant voyage in the ship.

It had been Hardy’s intention for Lowe to remain on board for a further survey up the eastern side of South Africa. However, because the chance of landings was remote because of the rough seas at that time of year it was decided to call it a day at the Cape. The seemingly unplanned early departure may explain why Lowe travelled Second Class and not his usual First on the return to Southampton on Walmer Castle; he must have obtained a passage within the few days before departure. He arrived, listed as a ‘naturalist’ on 29 April 1911. The voyage was not without incident. A Swiss assistant cook aged 23 was declared dead having disappeared at sea.

Further background to the trip is provided by David Armitage Bannerman (1886-1979) in his paper in The Ibis. Hardy had invited the Curator of Birds at the Museum, William Robert Ogilvie-Grant (1863 –1924) or a nominee—in this case Lowe—to join him on Mutine. 

Bannerman listed 207 species collected during the trip. He included field notes by Lowe where appropriate and Lowe himself wrote an addendum on Ichaboe Island. Bannerman wrote:

The collection includes examples of three new species, Sylviella lowei, Sylviella hardyi, and Cinnyris kruensis (which have already been described in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club)…

Bannerman named the Lemon-billed Crombec after Hardy but in both publications appears to have referred to the genus as Sylviella rather than Sylvietta. Both Bannerman and his boss, Ogilvie-Grant, made the same error and I suspect it came from the misreading of an earlier paper. Ogilvie-Grant named Sylviella lowei after Lowe. It appears in the Museum’s accession register with that name but is indexed as Sylviella lowii. I am completely confused since I can find virtually no mention of this bird other than that it has been lumped into the Long-billed Crombec (Sylvietta rufescens). However, Lowe collected it in Luanda, Angola, a place the Long-billed Crombec does not occur.

Hardy’s Crombec fared little better. It was lumped into the Lemon-billed Crombec (Sylvietta denti) and sometimes listed as a subspecies. Hardy himself fared better. He was Assistant Hydrographer of the Navy between 1914 and 1919. He retired on 1 February 1921 having been promoted to Rear-Admiral the day before. On the retired list he was promoted to Vice-Admiral in 1926. In retirement he lived near Ashford in Kent. A local newspaper obituary noted that he devoted himself to natural history.

What I have not been able to find out is under what capacity was Willoughby Lowe working. Was he operating as a ‘gentleman’ collector or was he being paid from Museum funds? I suspect the former. The specimens he collected were entered in the catalogue as being presented by Captain Hardy. Perhaps accounts of his later trips will provide further information. 

Itinerary and Map of the voyage from Bannerman's paper in The Ibis
The map was drawn by Captain Hardy
Collecting sites were underlined in the original. I have added the red lines

Bannerman DA. 1912 On two new species of birds from West Africa (Sylviella hardyi and Cinnyris kruensis). Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 29, 23-24.

Bannerman DA. 1912. On a collection of birds made by Mr. Willoughby P. Lowe on the West Coast of Africa and outlying Islands; with field-notes by the collector. The Ibis 29, 23-24.

Lowe WP. 1932. The Trail That Is Always New. London: Gurney and Jackson.

LINKS

Part 1: Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949). Collector of specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. Part One: Early Life in England and Farming in Colorado

Part 2: Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949). Collector of specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. Part Two: To the Philippines; his first collecting trip with a sea snake spectacular on the way there

Part 3: Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949). Collector of specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. Part Three: In the Philippines on his first collecting trip with John Roberts White

Part 4: Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949). Collector of specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. Part Four: 1909—A live Monkey-eating Eagle from the Philippines

Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus. Finding Miss Waldron

A bathroom lizard in Colombia. But which lizard? Learning about Alopoglossus

‘I’ve just found this in the bathroom’ is not an unusual cry in tropical wildlife lodges. This time my wife was clutching her hands together as she joined me outside. ‘Running around the floor—it took a bit of catching’ as she opened her fingers. It was a small lizard, an interesting lizard with its array of tough-looking scales arranged in rows and columns. It did not object to sitting unrestrained in the hand and after a couple of quick iPhone photographs it was persuaded to scuttle into the undergrowth.

We were staying at the lodge popular with wildlife groups visiting the Otún Quimbaya reserve. Hotel Kumanday (4°45’33.162”N; 75°36’45.858”W, altitude 1,670 metres) is on the edge of the village of La Florida. La Florida is on the Rio Otún which flows westward from the peaks of the Cordillera Central into the valley of the Rio Cauca. The Cauca flows northwards between the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Central to join the Magdalena before flowing into the Caribbean.

Back home a search indicated it was a shade lizard, genus Alopoglossus. By searching for images of those species that occur in Colombia and notwithstanding the problem that photographs of animals shown online may not have been correctly identified, we seemed able to narrow the search down to two species that occur in the Cauca drainage. Then, using the descriptions of the two species in original papers and the morphological differences between them, we concluded that this one was Alopoglossus stenolepis, originally described from further south and on the eastern slope of the Cordillera Occidental. The lizard from La Florida fits the description of A. stenolepis rather than A. vallensis in that the dorsal scales are not pointed front and back thus creating a zig-zag line where two rows meet, and the snout is curved in lateral view and not straight.

If this is indeed Alopoglossus stenolepis then it is one that was first described by George Albert Boulenger at the Natural History Museum in London in 1908 from a specimen collected by Mervyn George Palmer (1882-1954). Palmer was a collector for the Museum in Colombia, Ecuador and Nicaragua between 1904 and 1910.

The question is: did we get the ID right?

The taxonomy and phylogeny of those lizards currently included in the genus Alopoglossus has changed a great deal and has proved controversial. Currently, the thirty-odd species are the only ones included in their own family, Alopoglossidae. Many species were formerly included in the genus Ptychoglossus. I will not dwell on higher classification other than point out that these small lizards are often called microteids since the whole teid clan (for want of a better word) ranges from these small lizards to tegus, the size of the smaller monitors of the Old World.

Alopoglossus lizards are oviparous and occur from Costa Rica through northern South America, both east and west of the Andes and across Amazonia. They are diurnal inhabitants of the forest floor where they forage in the leaf litter. They have been found in human dwellings but how did this one come to be running around under a wash-basin and lavatory bowl?

Hotel Kumanday, La Florida

Harris DM. 1994. Review of the teiid lizard genus Ptychoglossus. Herpetological Monographs 8, 226-275. 

Which descendant of Richard Owen, great anatomist, royal favourite and wrong’un, worked at the University of Hong Kong in 1957-60?

Richard Owen

Richard Owen (1804-1892) the brilliant comparative anatomist but odious man was a celebrity of the Victorian era. But more than that, having given talks on natural history to Queen Victoria’s children, he became a royal favourite to the extent that he was given the lease on a grace-and-favour basis of a house, Sheen Lodge in Richmond Park. He lived there until his death, the house passing from to his son’s widow and then to her daughter, Olive Caroline Owen (1874-1959) who lived at the house with her mother and her own family. She married Francis Frederick Ommanney in 1897. It was her son, the great-great-grandson of Richard Owen who provides the link with the University of Hong Kong since he, Francis Downes Ommanney (1903-1980) was Reader in Zoology and Director of the Fisheries Research Unit in 1957-1960.

Francis Downes Ommanney

Francis Downes Ommanney, universally known as ‘Dick’, was already well-known author on his arrival in Hong Kong having produced a number of autobiographical accounts of his early life and travels. His early life at Sheen Lodge was covered in The House in the Park (1944). The family could not stay there because reading between the lines the grace-and-favour lease given to Richard Owen was one, common at the time, for three generations with the Sheen Lodge (later so badly damaged in an air raid in 1944 that it had to be demolished) having to be returned to the Crown after the death of Dick Ommanney’s grandmother in 1920.

Dick Ommanney’s legacy in Hong Kong was his last autobiographical travelogue, Fragrant Harbour (1962), which described Hong Kong and his life there. It was required reading for newcomers to the university like us later in the 1960s. To those in the know the offer to lend the book came with a caveat; we were advised to take part of the story with a pinch of salt. The publishers had advised the inclusion of a romantic episode and that the attachment to a bar girl, best summed as an academic in the World of Suzie Wong, was fictitious but with a grain of truth. Fictitious in that Ommanney was in his own circles known for his homosexuality but based on a possible friendship with the bargirls of Wanchai since some university staff along with some of their wives were known to frequent—on a drinks and people-watching basis—the bars and to talk at length with the momma-san.

Sheen Lodge, Richmond Park

Because Ommanney was an established and well-thought-of writer his life and works are covered on a number of websites. In short, after a spell as an office boy in the City of London, he graduated in zoology from what is now Imperial College, London in 1926. Then, for three years, he was Lecturer in Zoology at Queen Mary College, London. The next 10 years saw him on the staff of the Discovery Expedition, working both in London on the collections, at whaling stations in South Georgia and Durban and on the Royal Research Ship Discovery Il. For his service in Antarctica he was awarded the Polar Medal in Bronze in 1942. Ommanney Bay on the north coast of Coronation Island in the South Orkneys was named after him in 1933.

The first year of the Second World War saw him as an inspector on board a whale factory ship. But he soon joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and on 17 June 1940 was a temporary (i.e. war-time) Lieutenant, RNVR. In October 1943 he qualified for meteorological work. He served in the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic. His book, Flat Top, describes life on board an escort carrier on an arctic convoy to Murmansk. Editing work for the British Council was followed by two years with the Mauritius-Seychelles Fisheries Survey and then six years in Zanzibar and Singapore with the Colonial Research Services. During this time he was also a member of The Royal Navy Volunteer Supplementary Reserve. Then, at the age of 54, came Hong Kong.

Ommanney had a flat
in this block of 12
3 University Drive

Ommanney was allocated university accommodation in a small block of flats in what was then known as the University Compound. Five years later we lived in the same block. Built in the early 1950s to a design by a Swedish architect Ommanney did not like his flat since the design was too noisy for him as his amah and her friends and relations came and left through the only door which opened directly into the living room. He also thought the block ugly. We disagreed—the flats had two wide balconies which looked over the harbour, Kowloon and the mountains beyond—and if that block which was demolished in the 1970s was thought to be ugly by some university residents, as he wrote, you should see what replaced it.

Ommanney’s service in Hong Kong ended after one ‘tour’ (then of two years seven months followed by five months of home (i.e. UK) leave. The Fisheries Research Unit was an administrative anomaly. It had been established in its post-war form in 1952* and housed in the Northcote Science Building within the Department of Zoology. It comprised a head—who, like Ommanney, held a university post—and research officers paid by the Hong Kong government. The head gave a few lectures a year to senior undergraduates who needed four years to complete an honours degree but it had a budget and requirements that far exceeded that of its host department. In UK, fisheries research was and still is done by scientific civil servants, probably because the decisions on fishing quotas are highly political and do not necessarily follow the scientific advice. In 1960 the fisheries research unit was transferred to the Hong Kong government and entirely to its premises in Aberdeen.

In Fragrant Harbour, Ommanney described how he was informed of this change and of how he was informed he was to have no part in the unit’s future.

My research unit was a non-teaching department of the University, which felt towards it rather like a hen sitting on a duck's egg. In 196o the Government acquired a new ship, larger and more powerful, and trebled the financial grant to the research unit. The University then felt that it had hatched out a duckling. It had under its wing a non-teaching department which was costing more than all the science faculty departments together. The Government decided to remove this incubus from the University and absorb it into its own body. I and all my staff would then become civil servants. But my days in Hong Kong were already numbered, for the cloud now filled my sky. The telephone rang in my office one day. The Vice-Chancellor wished to see me.

He occupies a pleasant spacious room in the main building and from its windows you can see the blue stretch of the harbour filled with ships and ferries shuttling to and fro, the two crowded cities facing each other across it and the peak of Tai Mo Shan against the sky. The Vice-Chancellor is an Australian, an ex-soldier and a man of letters. He is not one to beat about the bush.

“I don't know whether I have good news for you or bad,” he said. "The Government don't want to take you on. Unfortunately, your age…”

Ommanney was 57 in 1960 and the retirement age for expat civil servants was then 55.

Dick Ommanney’s replacement as Director of Fisheries Research was Derek Bromhall (1929-2021) who was already the senior research officer in the unit and another interesting and energetic character who hit the headlines in two entirely different biological threads of his future career. But more of him for another article.

Fragrant Harbour was the list of his autobiographical travelogues. After Hong Kong Ommanney lived in a house ‘Ashleigh’ in the hamlet of Weekmoor near Milverton in Somerset. There he wrote a number of popular books including The Fishes in the Life Nature Library series, Life Nature Library Young Readers: The Fishes, Lost Leviathan, Animal Life in the Antarctic, A Draught of Fishes. Collecting Sea Shells. 

Another book, Frogs, Toads and Newts, written for children, won an award in 1974 as the best informative book for young people. Interviewed at home for the Bristol Evening Post of 24 October 1974, he said:

I was persuaded to write this book for children by my very old friend Dr. Gwynne Vevers, assistant director of science and head of the aquarium at London Zoo.

Francis Downes Ommanney, remembered as a private and shy man—and very different in nature compared to his great-great grandfather—died aged 77 on 30 June 1980 in a care home in Surrey. He was buried in Arbroath, Scotland, on 11 July joining his mother who had died there in 1959.

*G A C Herklots as Reader in Biology (and head of department) had established fisheries research in the 1930s along with S.Y Lin. The field station at Aberdeen was destroyed along with all the library, papers, specimens and records while other material in the then new Northcote Science Building had also been destroyed. In 1946 he wrote a letter to Nature requesting replacement copies from anybody who could help.