6o PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Prom the year 1872 he had been a member of the Berwickshire^ 

 Naturabsts' Club, of which he was President in 1895; his Presi- 

 dential Address urged the importance of field-woi'k and systematic 

 observation in botany, apprehending that they were being over- 

 shadowed by the work of the laboratory. 



He was greatly interested in Mendelian research, attended the 

 Genetic Conference in London in 1906, and intended to be 

 present at the 4th Conference Internationale de Genetique in 

 Paris in 1911, but his health prevented his presence; he was, 

 however, awarded a Mendel medal ; apparently he meant to write 

 a paper for that conference, but it has not been found amongst 

 the papers he left. 



He was elected a Pellow on the 21st Pebruary, 1889, and died 

 as mentioned above, aged 65. l^, D. J.], 



Allan Octavian Hume, C.B., was the youngest but one, the 

 eighth child of Joseph Hume, the well-known economic and 

 social reformer. Allan was born in 1829, and after training at 

 Haileybury, entered the service of the Hon. East India Company 

 in 1849, and was drafted to the Bengal Presidency, arriving ou 

 the 7th March of that year. Subsequently he served in the N.AV. 

 Provinces, as they were then called, as Collector, and was at 

 Etawah in 1858, when the Indian Mutiny broke out ; he raised 

 a local force, and distinguished himself in several engagements. 

 Por this he was created C.B, in 1860, and awarded the jnedal 

 with clasp. He knew the vernacular languages of the people 

 amongst whom he was set to rule, and ^^as known and liked by 

 them in return in a very uncommon degree. 



In ] 867 he was appointed Commissioner of Customs for the 

 N.W. Provinces, Punjab, and Central Provinces, and succeeded in 

 carrying through the abolition of the salt-barrier. He became offi- 

 ciating Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 

 in 1870, the following year he was Secretary in the Department 

 of Eeveuue, Agriculture and Commerce. During his early official 

 career he was energetic in jmshing forward free schools in his 

 own district of Efcawah ; and later on, he was distinguished by a 

 fearless independence of action and conviction, candidly speaking 

 his opinions on police reform and liquor traffic. This unusual 

 outspokenness and independence were naturally not to the taste 

 of his official superiors ; he was consequently superseded in his 

 secretaryship ; in 1879 he was appointed a Member of the Board 

 of Revenue, but retired from the Indian Service in 1882. 



Perhaps the most striking part of his career was subsequent 

 to his retirement, when he devoted himself as a private individual to 

 advancing the aims of the Indian Nationalists. The first gathering 

 of the Indian National Congress was held in 1885, and may be 

 said to be the \\ork of our late Pellow. 



His observations on Indian birds were issued as ' My Scrap- 

 Book, or Rough Notes on Indian Oology and Ornithology,' only 

 two numbers of which were published at Calcutta in 1869 and 



