COXTRIBUTOKS TO THE FIRST SERIES OF ' THE IRls/ 195 



Sir JOHN KIRK. 



Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S., Avas born in 

 1832, and received his chief education at Edinburgh 

 University, where in 1854 he took his degree of M.D, ; 

 lie then proceeded to Asia Minor, where he served during 

 the Russian war, visiting and making large Rotanical 

 collections on the upper slopes of ]Mt. Olympus and 

 Mt. Ida. After travelling in Syria and Egypt he was 

 appointed by the Foreign Office to accompany Dr. 

 Livingstone as Chief Officer and Naturalist on the Govern- 

 ment Expedition under that distinguished explorer. On this 

 he served from 1858 until the return of the Expedition to 

 England in 1864. During this time large collections of 

 Birds, Mammals, and Plants were made, which are now 

 deposited in the Natural History Museum at South 

 Kensington and at Kew, and have been described in various 

 works. 



In 1866 Sir John was appointed H.M. Vice-Consul at 

 Zanzibar, he became H.M. Consul-General in 1873, and was 

 promoted to be Agent Consul-General at Zanzibar in 1880. 

 He negotiated and signed the Treaty which in 1873 put a stop 

 to the slave markets and the slave trade throughout the 

 Zanzibar dominions, and negotiated and signed a Treaty 

 of Commerce with Zanzibar. He was also British 

 Plenipotentiary to the Brussels Conference of 1889-90, 

 at Avhich seventeen Powers agreed as to the steps 

 to be taken for regulating the trade in arms and spirits in 

 Africa, and for dealing generally with questions arising out 

 of the Slave Trade and supervision of vessels at sea. He 

 was a delegate at Brussels in 1890 to fix the import duties in 

 the ('Onventional Basin of the Congo, and was a member of 

 the Commission for the revision of Slave Trade Instructions 

 in 1891. In 1895 he was sent as Special Commissioner to the 



