SIR W. F. HRLY-HUTCHINSON". 39 



steadily diminishing, and there were amongst the Dutch farmers 

 men who were not less progressive in their methods than the 

 most progressive Britishers. . . . He felt bound to say, in 

 justice to the South African wine farmers of to-day, that the 

 presentation of the case with regard to the South African wine 

 industry in the paper was scarcely fair to them, and he attributed 

 that, not in any sense to original sin on the part of the author of 

 the paper, but to the fact that he had never been to South Africa 

 to see for himself. . . . He had lived in South Africa for 

 seventeen years, and he knew the failings of the Dutch farmers 

 and also their \irtues, and they deserved encouragement rather 

 than blame. 



The continued interest in South Africa and its doings which 

 Sir Water evinced on the occasion just alluded to remained with 

 him to the end. It is well known that uj) to his death he was a 

 Director of the Standard Bank of South Africa, and one of his 

 very last public appearances was at a meeting of the Royal 

 Colonial Institute on the 13th June, 1913, when, presiding at a 

 lecture on " the Plumage Bill in relation to the British Em]:»ire," 

 he took the opportunity of referring to the pleasure with which 

 he had on more than one occasion visited the farm of one of the 

 pioneers of ostrich-breeding in South Africa, Mr. Oscar Evans, 

 and had inspected the produce of the birds on the farm. 



The South African Association for the Advancement of 

 Science enjoyed the privilege of having Sir Walter Hely- 

 Hutchinson as its I'resident during the year of its meeting at 

 Grahamstown, 1908, and in his Presidential Address, on that 

 occasion, he clearly demonstrated that in making himself 

 acquainted with the various details of scientific progress in South 

 Africa, since the days of La Caille and Lichtenstein, he had 

 exercised the same thoroughness that characterised all that he 

 undertook in his official life. The main subject of Sir Walter's 

 address, on that occasion, was the efiforts of science in the matter 

 of combating disease, an appropriate theme in view of the fact 

 that at that meeting the first award of the South Africa Medal — 

 for achievement and promise in. scientific research in South Africa 

 — was made to Dr. Arnold Theiler, then \^eterinary Bacteriologist 

 to the Transvaal Government, in recognition of his work in con- 

 nection with diseases enzootic in South Africa. The close 

 acquaintance that Sir Walter then showed with the details of 

 contemporarv scientific advance in the sub-continent, was a reve- 

 lation even to those who were quite aware of his deep interest in 

 all the phases of the country's progress, and after that it was no 

 surprise to find him lamenting that so few of the scientific investi- 

 gators now working in South Africa were men born in the 

 country, and urging that it was the obvious duty of South Africa 

 to afi'ord many more adequate facilities in the direction of pro- 



