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Stickland
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Strickland

him to Sir Roderick Murchison, who asked him to lay down the boundary line between the lias and the new red sandstone on the ordnance map, then in preparation.

In April 1835 Murchison visited Cracombe House, Evesham, where Strickland was living with his parents, bringing with him William John Hamilton [q. v.], who was then arranging his tour through Asia Minor, Strickland at once agreed to go with him, and they left London on 4 July. Together they traversed Greece, Constantinople, and the western coast of Asia Minor, Strickland returning alone through Greece and visiting Italy and Switzerland. During the two following years Strickland was mainly engaged in preparing the results of his journeys for the Geological Society, reading six papers on the geology of the countries visited. In 1837, in company with his father, he visited the north of Scotland, Orkney, Skye, and the Great Glen, meeting Hugh Miller at Cromarty. Murchison then urged Strickland to work out the new red sandstone in the neighbourhood of his home, and the result was a joint paper on that formation in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, in the ‘Transactions of the Geological Society’ (vol. v.), which is of interest as containing the earliest mention of fossil footprints in English triassic rocks. At the British Association meeting at Glasgow in 1840 Strickland read his first paper on classification, ‘On the true method of discovering the Natural System in Zoology and Botany,’ attacking such ‘binary’ and ‘quinary’ methods as those of Macleay and Swainson (Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi.) With Lindley and Babington, he was appointed on a committee on the vitality of seeds, to which Daubeny and Henslow were afterwards co-opted, and the fifteen years' work of which was summarised by Daubeny in his presidential address at the Cheltenham meeting in 1856.

Soon afterwards Strickland's attention was directed to the need of reform in zoological nomenclature: a plan with suggested rules was drawn up by him in 1841, and circulated among many naturalists at home and abroad; it was discussed at the Plymouth meeting of the British Association in that year; and in February 1842 a committee was appointed, consisting of Darwin, Henslow, Jenyns (afterwards Blomefield), John Phillips, Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Richardson, W. Ogilby, and J. O. Westwood, with Strickland as reporter. To this committee Yarrell, Owen, W. J. Broderip, W. E. Shuckard, and G. R. Waterhouse were afterwards added. The ‘rules’ drawn up by them, which were chiefly Strickland's work, were approved at the Manchester meeting of the association in 1842, and were first printed in the report for that year. They were reprinted with some modification by Sir William Jardine in 1863, and in the ‘Report’ for 1865; and, having been recognised as authoritative by naturalists generally, were re-edited, at the request of the association, by Dr. P. L. Sclater in 1878. It was at the Manchester meeting in 1842 that Strickland broached the idea of a natural history publishing society, which he at first proposed to call the Montagu Society. Dr. George Johnston of Berwick, however, took the first active steps to realise the scheme, which resulted in the Ray Society. For one of the first volumes issued by the society Strickland translated Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte's ‘Report on the State of Zoology in Europe.’

On his marriage, in 1845, Strickland made a tour through Holland, Bremen, and Hamburg to Copenhagen, Malmo, Lund, and Stralsund, returning by Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, the Saxon Switzerland, Frankfort, and Brussels, visiting most of the museums on the way. His attention was now, under the influence of Sir William Jardine, his father-in-law, mainly directed to ornithology, and on this journey he was much interested in the pictures and remains of the dodo. Taking a house in Beaumont Street, Oxford, he devoted some hours daily to his work on ‘Ornithological Synonyms,’ one volume of which was issued after his death by his widow and her father (London, 1855). He also carried on an extensive ornithological correspondence with Edward Blyth in India, and with Sir William Jardine, and began a ‘Synonymy of Reptiles.’ At the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1847 he was chairman of Section D, and gave an evening lecture on the dodo. With the assistance in the anatomical part of Dr. A. G. Melville, afterwards professor of zoology at Galway, Strickland in 1848 produced his monograph on ‘The Dodo and its Kindred; or the History and Affinities of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds,’ London, fol. The preparation of the illustrations for this work and for Sir William Jardine's ‘Contributions to Ornithology’ directed Strickland's notice to De la Motte's process of ‘anastatic’ printing. He and his wife drew birds on paper with lithographic chalk, and De la Motte, who was then living in Oxford, printed from these drawings. Strickland wrote two letters to the ‘Athenæum’ (1848, pp. 172, 276) on this process, which he styled papyrography. He arranged the publication by the Ray