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1975 OBITUARIES 115 OBITUARIES MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MEIKLEJOHN ‘That egg you laid today was blotched: I think it comes of being watched. .... All birds would rather quit their perch than be a subject for research.’ from MFMM ‘The Naturalist’s Early Morning Walk’ Bird Notes 1950 Professor Meiklejohn was a remarkable original who will long be remembered with affection by numberless friends from all walks of life. He was a gifted linguist, with a deep appreciation of literature and a striking ability to recall everything he had read. But ornithologists will think first of the scholarly wit of his lectures and the humour of his popular writing, subtly persuading his audience not to be too serious about birds, and that enjoying life is a matter of the way you look at it. In his after-dinner style there was more than a touch of Hoffnung, but he was also an excellent teacher and unforgettable lecturer, knowing just when an amusing anecdote was needed. Born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on 24 June 1913, into a family which encouraged an interest in natural history, he went to Gresham’s School, Holt, and thence with an open scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford. First class honours in French and Italian in 1934 preceded a move to Merton College and a Harmsworth Scholarship. During these formative years he came in contact with a rising generation of distinguished ornithologists such as David Lack, Hugh Elliot, James Fisher, Max Nicholson and W. B. Alexander. From 1937 he lectured in Italian and Old French at Cape Town University, leaving to join the South African army at Pretoria in 1941 and serving in Intelligence in Kenya, Egypt, Palestine and Italy. After the war he was a year with the British Council in Teheran. On his travels he watched birds and picked up languages-he had a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Spanish, German, Provenqal, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Arabic, Roumanian, Persian, and of course French, Italian and English. Three years as head of the Italian Department at Leeds led him, in 1949, to the Stevenson Chair of Italian at Glasgow University. During 25 years there he built up the Italian Department to be the largest in Britain, and in 1964 President Saragat honoured him Cavaliere della SolidarietP Italiana for his services to Italian studies. He died on 14 May 1974 after a short illness, and at his special request his ashes were scattered on the Isle of May, which he had first visited in 1936 and which held many happy memories for him. Maury had his favourite haunts, to which he returned time after time, and in recent years he made many trips to study the birds and language and culture of Sardinia, living simply and enjoying the company of the local people. He expounded the benefits of watching birds on foot, and resisted the motor car. He persisted for years with so ancient a pair of binoculars (Bird Notes 1956, plate 9) that one might suppose him to be a botanist who had begun to take an interest in birds; but with them he could identify the most obscure species. He was indeed a very competent botanist, and a pleasing water-colourist too. I n maturity he was round and darkly Latin, with a small moustache and narrow-rimmed spectacles, and habitually garbed for birdwatching at even mildly formal gatherings. Equally happy talking with the many ordinary people he met on his rural rambles as with his intellectual equals, he was widely liked and respected. He was the essence of charity and would always find an excuse for someone who behaved uncharitably towards him.

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MEIKLEJOHN

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Page 1: MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MEIKLEJOHN

1975 OBITUARIES 115

OBITUARIES

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MEIKLEJOHN

‘That egg you laid today was blotched: I think it comes of being watched.

. . . . All birds would rather quit their perch than be a subject for research.’

from MFMM ‘The Naturalist’s Early Morning Walk’ Bird Notes 1950

Professor Meiklejohn was a remarkable original who will long be remembered with affection by numberless friends from all walks of life. He was a gifted linguist, with a deep appreciation of literature and a striking ability to recall everything he had read. But ornithologists will think first of the scholarly wit of his lectures and the humour of his popular writing, subtly persuading his audience not to be too serious about birds, and that enjoying life is a matter of the way you look at it. In his after-dinner style there was more than a touch of Hoffnung, but he was also an excellent teacher and unforgettable lecturer, knowing just when an amusing anecdote was needed.

Born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on 24 June 1913, into a family which encouraged an interest in natural history, he went to Gresham’s School, Holt, and thence with an open scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford. First class honours in French and Italian in 1934 preceded a move to Merton College and a Harmsworth Scholarship. During these formative years he came in contact with a rising generation of distinguished ornithologists such as David Lack, Hugh Elliot, James Fisher, Max Nicholson and W. B. Alexander.

From 1937 he lectured in Italian and Old French at Cape Town University, leaving to join the South African army at Pretoria in 1941 and serving in Intelligence in Kenya, Egypt, Palestine and Italy. After the war he was a year with the British Council in Teheran. On his travels he watched birds and picked up languages-he had a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Spanish, German, Provenqal, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Arabic, Roumanian, Persian, and of course French, Italian and English. Three years as head of the Italian Department at Leeds led him, in 1949, to the Stevenson Chair of Italian at Glasgow University. During 25 years there he built up the Italian Department to be the largest in Britain, and in 1964 President Saragat honoured him Cavaliere della SolidarietP Italiana for his services to Italian studies. He died on 14 May 1974 after a short illness, and at his special request his ashes were scattered on the Isle of May, which he had first visited in 1936 and which held many happy memories for him.

Maury had his favourite haunts, to which he returned time after time, and in recent years he made many trips to study the birds and language and culture of Sardinia, living simply and enjoying the company of the local people. He expounded the benefits of watching birds on foot, and resisted the motor car. He persisted for years with so ancient a pair of binoculars (Bird Notes 1956, plate 9) that one might suppose him to be a botanist who had begun to take an interest in birds; but with them he could identify the most obscure species. He was indeed a very competent botanist, and a pleasing water-colourist too.

In maturity he was round and darkly Latin, with a small moustache and narrow-rimmed spectacles, and habitually garbed for birdwatching at even mildly formal gatherings. Equally happy talking with the many ordinary people he met on his rural rambles as with his intellectual equals, he was widely liked and respected. He was the essence of charity and would always find an excuse for someone who behaved uncharitably towards him.

Page 2: MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MEIKLEJOHN

116 OBITUARIES IBIS 117

His first contribution in British Bird appeared when he was just 14, and over the years his name is found in the pages of ornithological journals, often correcting the error into which an unwary editor has fallen. He contributed particularly to the Scottish Naturalist and to Scottish Birds, of which he was the founder editor from 1958 to 1961. One could wish that he had published more of his ornithological material, yet his output was notably diverse. He wrote of autumn birds in the Carmargue in Ibis 1935, of South African birds in Ostrich 1939-41 and of Persian birds in Ibis 1948. He contributed a paper, ‘Wild birds as human food’, for a symposium on nutrition and poultry (Proc. Nutr. SOC. 1962), and an erudite analysis of ‘The birds of Dante’ to the Annals of Science 1954. He was particu- larly interested in the firsthand knowledge of birds shown in the Middle Ages by Dante, and especially by the Emperor Frederick I1 in his De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, and he lectured on this, pointing out how these authors had been ornithologically misunderstood by their translators and critics ; he alone possessed the unique combination of linguistic and ornithological experience needed to identify the birds and behaviour described in these works.

But it was perhaps for his lighter writing that he was best known. His weekend column in the Glasgow Herald, over the initials MFMM, ran well beyond 1000 articles from 1951 to 1974; in it he illuminated his personality, taking a genial, detached view of quit@ ordinary events in his life, and writing so perceptively that his weekly soufflds we“ eagerly awaited by a wide public. He made a considerable contribution to the enjoymel’ of ornithology, and some of his best material is the scattering of exquisitely humeroi musings and verse in bird observatory logbooks-a few of them reproduced in W. Eggeling’s The Isle of May (1960)-md in the pages of the RSPB’s Bird Notes, including the famous ‘Notes on the Hoodwink Dissimulatrix spuria’, a species described with P wealth of eccentric detail in Bird Notes 1950.

Though one remembers him more as an active observer of birds, Maury served on share of committees, being a member of the BOU Council in 1956-59 and of the BG J

British Records Committee from its appointment in 1953 until about 1960. His consider- able field experience (including a four-figure life list) qualified him as a founder member of the British Birds Rarities Committee in 1959. Shortly after settling in Scotland he became a Trustee of Fair Isle Bird Observatory; he was President of the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club from 1960 to 1963; and he was a member of the Secretary of State for Scotland’s Advisory Committee on the Protection of Birds.

He will be sadly missed, for he enriched so many people’s lives through his inimitable personality.

ANDREW T. MACMILLAN

CYRIL WMTHROP MACKWORTH-PRAED 1891-1974

With the death of Cyril Mackworth-Praed on 30 June, the Union has lost one of its Honorary Life Members, and one to whom it owed a great deal. In the fifty-eight years in which he was a member, he was Honorary Secretary-Treasurer from 1936 to 1944, Vice- President 1949-51 and Treasurer 1951-56. His willingness to take on these commitments in the midst of a very full life was typical of his whole outlook. If he saw a job needed doing, he set about doing it, quietly, methodically and efficiently. It was the realization of the need for an African bird-book, written for amateur naturalists, that caused him to embark with the late Captain Claude Grant on the comprehensive work for which he is most widely remembered, the six volume African handbook of birds.

A rather lonely childhood in Herefordshire developed his interest in shooting, fishing and natural history which was encouraged in his early school days at Sandroyd. After