properly. My father was fond of telling a story of this individual, who began a lecture to a Scientific Society thus: 'The subject of my lecture to-day is the wertical slit in the wisual organs of wenomous wipers.'

Du Chaillu was a strange character-a cosmopolitan Bohemian, born in Louisiana. He spoke several lan-ze guages, but all of them with a foreign accent. He was incapable of writing two consecutive sentences of good: English, but he knew clearly what he wanted to say and never failed to find a friend, either here or in America, to help him to express it. He was a warm-hearted friend and one of the most amusing companions I ever met. He was as great a favourite with children as George Borrow was the reverse. Borrow seemed to take pleasure in exciting their fears, and used to come to us with a frown and say, 'I will scratch your face.' We always called him the Scratchy Man. At my father's table he made his first acquaintance with a haggis; and long afterwards, when he came down to Wimbledon to dine, his first words on entering the house were, 'Is there a haggis to-day?' My father and mother were once present at a dinner-party where he and Dr and Mrs Whewell were fellow guests. Whewell and Borrow were both large and powerful men, and at table they fell into such violent controversy that it seemed likely they would come to blows, and Mrs Whewell was carried fainting out of the room.

Soon after the death of the Prince Consort, it was decided to bring out a volume of his speeches, which Queen Victoria was anxious to see published by the first anniversary of his death. The firm to which the work was entrusted (it has long ceased to exist) failed altogether in their preparations; and very late in the day my father was called in to take over the responsibility. He had the book re-set, and by very strenuous efforts succeeded in getting it ready by the appointed time. I shall never forget his delight and gratification on receiving a copy with the following inscription in the Queen's own hand-writing: 'To John Murray Esq. with the sincere acknowledgment of his zealous exertions in the publication of these valuable Memorials of the great and good Prince, from His broken-hearted Widow, Victoria R. Osborne, Dec. 20, 1862.'

In the forties my father first made the acquaintance of Dr (afterwards Sir William) Smith; and they worked together in the closest friendship till my father's death in 1892. I never heard of the shadow of a dispute between them, although they carried on a large number of literary enterprises without intermission during those years. In order to show how strong was the mutual regard of the two men I give an extract from a letter written to me by Sir William on my father's death.

'I feel the deepest sympathy with you and your family in the irreparable loss you have sustained in the death of your dear father. . . . You will have the consolation of looking back upon his long, useful and honoured career. I have known most of the distinguished men during the last two generations, but I know no one who was so universally liked and looked up to and respected in all classes of society, and whose death will be more sincerely regretted. Of my own personal loss I dare hardly think. I have lost my oldest and best friend. I have lived with him in the most intimate friendship for nearly fifty years without one jarring note; and the longer I have known him, the more I have respected, loved and admired him. I have always received from him the most signal marks of confidence, kindness and generosity, and I feel that his death will darken my declining years.'

Together they planned and carried out the Dictionary of the Bible, the Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Antiquities and Biography, and those of Christian Antiquities and Biography, the Latin-English and English-Latin Dictionaries and the Classical Atlas, as well as many minor works which still hold their own as monuments of English scholarship. These enterprises, together with the Dictionary of Hymnology and the Speaker's Commentary, involved an outlay on my father's part of close on 150,000l. In all cases he had long to wait before his outlay was recouped, and in one or two instances it is probable that it never will be repaid; but, with him, good and creditable work was an incentive as strong as the prospect of financial profit.

Writing to Sir William Smith on the occasion of my father's death, the Rev. W. Barry, D.D., then Rector of St Birinus, Dorchester, said:

If I may be allowed to say it, the task in which, during

so many years, Mr Murray's name and yours were joined was surely as important as any which could have been under taken-I mean the bringing within reach of the modern world all that is left of the ancient. If we are not to rur headlong down the steep into a democracy without light o self-control, one of the chief hindrances to that catastrophe will be historical knowledge. In like manner it is of the utmost importance that literature should not be set up as ar enemy over against the Christian faith. Whoever has con tributed, and that in large measure, to bind the future in this way with the past has, I venture to believe, much reason for thankfulness.'

For fifty years my father never ceased to pursue his geological studies, collecting and collating facts, reading all the new books on the subject, and forming his own independent views. In 1877 he published a small book entitled 'Scepticism in Geology and the reason for it, an assemblage of facts from Nature opposed to the theory of Causes now in action and refuting it,' by 'Verifier.' As the title indicates, this book is an assault on the theories maintained by Sir Charles Lyell and his followers; and I venture to describe it as a model of what such a work should be-clear, cogent, and fearless, but without a discourteous phrase from beginning to end. With his usual modesty he withheld his name, but the book attracted a good deal of attention and soon passed into a second edition. In 1915 I received the following letter from an American Professor of Physics:

'August 16, 1915.

'DEAR SIR, I recently obtained from you a copy of Scepticism in Geology" by "Verifier." I must say that I admire the book very much, and would very much like to know the real name of the author. It seems to me that the forty years (nearly) since the publication of this book under this incognito ought to be amply sufficient to answer the purposes of the author, and that the public are now entitled to have the veil lifted and to know his real name. Possibly the name has long been known among other geologists, but it has escaped me.

This book deserves to be far better known than it is; and I feel sure that the author must be a scholar of some standing, for he is certainly a shrewd reasoner, and is a master of a pleasing style, to say nothing of having complete command

of the geological literature of his time. May I not hope that you will favor me with the name of the author, and possibly with some information regarding the kind of reception which the book received on its publication? I infer that it has not had a wide circulation. But it deserves it.

The great popularity of the Hand-Books was accompanied by gratifying financial success. With the profits thus won by my father off his own bat,' he determined to obtain for himself a country residence. For many years he had been drawn towards Wimbledon-then a small village and one of the most attractive within easy reach of London-where his father had lived so far back as 1806.

In 1851 some of the outlying portions of Wimbledon Park, one of Lord Spencer's seats and a distinguished Social rendezvous, were being sold off. My father took his friend Allen Thomson down to help him in the choice of a site, and finally bought a few acres on the brow of the hill overlooking the lake and with scarcely a building in sight. There he built himself a house of very modest dimensions, but in the course of thirty or forty years it, as well as the grounds, had grown to two or three times their original size. He wrote to Allen Thomson, The house will be moderate in size and thoroughly well built, no extravagance, I hope. Do you think it would sound absurd to call it Murrayfield [a suburb of Edinburgh]?' The name decided on in the end was Newstead, and there he spent many of the happiest days of his life.

Among his many pursuits and studies arboriculture and horticulture held a high place. He was especially fond of Conifers; and many of the trees planted by him grew to be fine specimens. Some of them were engraved for Mongredien's book on Trees and Shrubs. He took great pleasure in planting some of the new and rare shrubs brought by Robert Fortune from China (including Berberis Darwinii) and by Sir Joseph Hooker from India. Rhododendrons were his special favourites; and some of his best came from Highclere, given him by Lady Carnarvon when he was on a visit there.

He had neither the means nor the inclination to
Vol. 281.-No. 458.

become a collector on a large scale, but he had greaf taste and discrimination, and in course of time he filleċ his house with a variety of treasures, pictures, classica coins, ivories, china, in which he took a personal delight The house at Wimbledon, in its latest state, contained an excellent library; and thither he transported most of his father's books and MSS from Albemarle Street, and added many more besides. He never had a study of his own, but preferred to work-and he worked almost every evening—in the midst of a family-party, working, talking, or playing games, which however never seemed to disturb him. One evening I happened to read aloud an account in the newspaper of a hippopotamus having escaped from the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris and finally having plunged into the river. My father looked up from his work and without a moment's hesitation said, 'What an in-Seine beast!'

The energy of his youthful days never deserted him till within a few days of his death. Whatever the weather, he insisted on walking the mile and a half to and from the station daily; and, when the carriage was sent to meet him on some dark, wet evening, I have known him put his handbag into it and walk home. He regarded a walk as the infallible cure for almost all bodily ailments, and I should hardly have been surprised to hear him recommend it for a broken leg.

On one occasion this propensity brought him into imminent peril. In 1855 he and my mother went for a tour in the Alps. On their return they set out from Locarno, intending to drive to Airolo and cross the St Gothard Pass the following day. I believe that it was somewhere near Faido that, as the carriage was slowly going up a steep hill, my father insisted on getting out to walk. The night was dark and the road was narrow and on the edge of a precipice 1200 feet deep. My father, owing to his defective sight, fell over the edge, but by what seemed almost a miracle was caught by a grassy slope twelve feet down and lay there unconscious. The carriage passed on and waited for him at the top of the hill. When he failed to appear, my mother and two friends who had joined them for the night's expedition became alarmed and sent the coachman back with one of the carriage lamps to search.