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OBITUARY. 



E. H. AlTKEN. 



Eha lias passed away. To numbers of the old members of our 

 Society the news will bring sorrow and regret. The world is poorer 

 by a good man and a genial spirit. He died of Bright's disease, never 

 doubting to the last that he would soon be better. Nearly tw^o years- 

 ago he retired to Edinburgh, having completed a long official service 

 in this country. Some weeks before his death his sight failed, and he 

 was never informed of the cause which, when discovered, had advanced 

 to a stage that rendered recovery hopeless. He died on the night 

 of Easter Sunday, the 11th April, at his residence in Morningside 

 Place, Edinburgh. He suffered nothing and passed away peacefully 

 in his sleep. 



Edward Hamilton Aitken was born at Satara in the Bombay Presi- 

 dency in the year 1851. He was the son of a Scotch Missionary. He 

 was educated in Bombay and took the degree of B.A. and passed 

 successfully the examination of M. A. in the Bombay University. He 

 served first in the Educational Department, changed later into the 

 Customs Department and rose to be Collector of Customs, Karachi, 

 where the last two years of his time in India were passed. Having 

 been brought up in this country, it was comparatively late in life that 

 he went to England for the first time. The final change home, spe- 

 cially to a climate like that of Edinburgh in winter and spring, proved 

 too severe for a man who had spent practically all his life in India, and 

 there can be little doubt that it considerably hastened the end. 



Eha was one of the original founders of our Society, he edited, in 

 conjunction with others, the first numbers of oar Journal and from that 

 lime forward to the end continued to contribute notes and articles to 

 it. All branches of Zoology interested him, but more specially birds 

 and insects, and for many years he was in charge of the Society's 

 Entomological Section. Most of his spare time was spent in the study 

 of animal life and he had a special genius for seizing the striking and 

 characteristic points in the appearance and behaviour of individual 

 species and a happy knack of translating them into print so as to ren- 

 der his descriptions unmistakeable. He looked apon all creatures in 

 the proper way, as if each had a soul and character of its own. He 



