1 6 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



The Ballot for the Council having closed, the President nomi- 

 nated Dr. Braithwaite, Dr. R. C. Prior, and Mr. Jenner Weir 

 as Scrutineers. The votes having been counted, and rej^orted 

 to the President, he declared that Alfred W. Bennett, B.Sc, 

 Francis Darwin, M.B., Prof. E. Ray Lankester, Sir John Lub- 

 bock, Bart., and George J. Romanes, F.R.S., had been elected 

 into the Council in the room of E. R. Alston, Esq. (deceased), 

 Dr. Thomas Boycott, Prof. Michael Foster, Dr. J. Grwyu Jefireys, 

 and Prof. St. Gr. Mivart, who were removed. 



Tlic Ballot for Officers also having closed, the President nomi- 

 nated the same Scrutineers. The votes having been counted, 

 and reported to the President, he declared the result as fol- 

 lows : — Presideni, Sir John Lul)bock, Bart. ; Treasurer, Frederick 

 Currey, Esq. ; B. Daydon Jackson, Esq., re-elected Botanical 

 Secretary, and George J. Romanes, F.R.S., elected Zoological 

 Secretary. 



Ohituary Notices. 



Et)"WAEB RicnAET) Alstok, F.G.S., F.Z.S, Member of the 

 British Ornithologists' Union, Secretary of the Linnean Society, 

 &c., was born at Stockbriggs, near Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, on 

 the 1st December, 1845. In boyhood he was very delicate and 

 subject to asthma, which precluded his going to school ; so that 

 he was nominally educated at home. Practically he educated 

 himself ; and the success of this self-tuition, as carried out by one 

 possessed of his force of character, has been amply demonstrated, 

 A keen interest in natural history was developed in him from an 

 early age ; and numerous contributions from his pen upon zoo- 

 \o<y\, its folk-lore, and field-notes, the results of his observations, 

 both in his own country and on the Continent, apj)eared in the 

 ' Zooloo-ist' and in various Scottish magazines. A preliminary 

 visit to Norway with Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown led to a more 

 extended tour in 1872, when the two friends pushed theii' explo- 

 rations as liir as Archangel ; and contributed to ' The Ibis ' of 

 1873 a paper which was an important addition to the limited 

 knowledge tbeu possessed respecting the geographical distri- 

 bution of birds in North-eastern Europe. Ou his return, Mr. 

 Alston took up his residence in Loudon, devoting himself princi- 

 pally to the study of the osteology of the Mammalia, under the 

 excellent guidance of Professor Flower at the College of Surgeons ; 

 and to the literature of the subject in the pages of the ' Zoological 

 Record,' in which he edited this section until the year 1878 in- 

 clusive. In addition to this, in 1874 he assisted the late Professor 

 Thomas Bell in the second edition of ' British Quadrupeds ' to an 

 extent which the original author was unable adequately to acknow- 

 ledf^e iu print ; and in the same year he began to contribute 

 papers to the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' on various 

 Mammals, principally ou the Rodents. The most important of 

 these, nearly a score iu number, are perhaps those on the Squirrels 



