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    Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself
    Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself
    Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself
    Ebook54 pages46 minutes

    Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself

    By Justin Cahill

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    About this ebook

    Alfred John North was one of Australia's pioneer ornithologists. He was the author of Nests and Eggs of Birds Found Breeding in Australia and Tasmania (1901-1914), which remains a standard reference work today. While often maligned by his critics, the discovery of North's diary and private papers show him to have been a scientist of the highest calibre.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJustin Cahill
    Release dateOct 31, 2013
    ISBN9781310348945
    Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself
    Author

    Justin Cahill

    Welcome to my Smashwords profile.I am a New Zealand-born writer, based in Sydney. My main interests are nature and history.My thesis was on the negotiations between the British and Chinese governments over the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It was used as a source in Dr John Wong’s Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, the standard work on that conflict.I wrote a column on the natural history of the Wolli Creek Valley for the Earlwood News (sadly, now defunct) between 1992 and 1998.My short biography of the leading Australian ornithologist, Alfred North (1855-1917), was published in 1998.I write regular reviews on books about history for my blog,’ Justin Cahill Reviews’ and Booktopia. I’m also a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Heckler' column.My current projects include completing the first history of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand told from the perspective of ordinary people and a study of the extinction of Sydney’s native birds.After much thought, I decided to make my work available on Smashwords. Australia and New Zealand both have reasonably healthy print publishing industries. But, like it or not, the future lies with digital publishing.So I’m grateful to Mark Coker for having the vision to establish Smashwords and for the opportunity to distribute my work on it.

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      Book preview

      Alfred John North - Justin Cahill

      Alfred John North: In Justice and Fairness to Myself

      The life and work of one of Australia’s pioneer ornithologists

      Justin Cahill

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 Justin Cahill

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Part of the proceeds of all sales of this biography go to Birding NSW and BirdLife Australia to help advance the study and protection of Australia’s native birds.

      Discover other titles by Justin Cahill at Smashwords.com

      Please direct all inquiries to Justin Cahill at

      PO Box 108, Lindfield, 2070

      New South Wales, Australia.

      or to mailto:jpjc@ozemail.com.au

      CONTENTS

      1. Introduction

      2. Early Life and Work

      3. The Horn Expedition

      4. The Victorians

      5. Nests and Eggs

      6. The Amateurs

      7. The Professionals

      8. Later Life

      Acknowledgements

      Manuscript Sources

      I

      Introduction

      The debt owed by Australian ornithology to Alfred John North, Assistant in Ornithology at the Australian Museum from 1891 to 1917 and author of Nests and Eggs of Birds Found Breeding in Australia and Tasmania, has passed largely unrecognised since his death. Apart from a short appreciation by the Australian ornithologist Gregory Mathews, an anonymous obituary published in the Emu, Walter Boles' foreword to a facsimile edition of Nests and Eggs and an article, probably by Alec Chisholm, in the Australian Encyclopaedia, no general survey of North's work or memoir of his life has been published.

      Fortunately, North's surviving manuscripts and publications contain sufficient material to provide a detailed account of his career and achievements. These sources include North's private notebooks and his correspondence, most of which consists of letters he received from other ornithologists. Of the letters written by North, only those to the Victorian biologist Walter Baldwin Spencer and preserved in his remaining letters books appear to have survived. Additional information is provided by North's monographs, especially his Nests and Eggs of Birds Found Breeding in Australia and Tasmania, subsequently cited as Nests and Eggs, and his journal articles, including those published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales.

      Although a prolific writer, North remains an elusive figure. He rarely engaged in personal reflection in his private notes and letters. While they contain occasional flashes of irritation, sarcasm and comments on his health, they are almost completely dominated by ornithological concerns. They provide few insights into North or his wife, Clara, who even in his private notebook is consistently referred to as Mrs North. Although he appears to have been a somewhat dispassionate figure North had the capacity to provoke strong, generally negative, reactions in others.

      These reactions, based on North's alleged disregard for the work of contemporary professional and amateur ornithologists, dominate available accounts of his life. North was first publicly criticised on this basis in a review of the first part Nests and Eggs. Reproaching North for completely ignoring the work of contemporary authors, such as Archibald James Campbell and Dudley Le Souëf, the anonymous reviewer suggested North's omissions were likely to discount the high standards of his writing (Review, 1901, pp. 28-30).

      North's reasons for supposedly ignoring the work of his contemporaries have been attributed to his narrow-mindedness, intense jealousy and jaundiced views towards them (White, 1981, pp. 76 and 85; Hindwood, 1946, p. 197). In assessing these claims, the biographer must determine whether North would have allowed jealousy and prejudice to undermine his life's work. Although Mathews

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