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EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON, B.A., m.b.Cantab. 

 Surgeon, Naturalist, Explorer. 



AN APPRECIATION 



BY 



WILLIAM S. BRUCE, ll.d., f.r.s.e. 

 [Plate 8.] 



I FIRST met Dr. Edward A. Wilson on board the " Dis- 

 covery " on his return from the Antarctic Regions in 

 1904, and the second time at the International Ornith- 

 ological Congress in London in 1905, when he and I were 

 both communicating ornithological results respectively 

 of the " Discovery " and of the " Scotia." Since that 

 time I was in close touch with him, and on several occa- 

 sions he visited the " Scotia " collections in the Scottish 

 Oceanographical Laboratory and in the Royal Scottish 

 Museum. Although our meetings were not very numerous, 

 yet as fellow workers in the Polar Regions we were 

 drawn together more closely perhaps than many others 

 who had known each other longer and seen each other 

 more frequently. We could both appreciate better than 

 anybody else what it means to be cut off from civihzation 

 for long periods, to be huddled together in close quarters 

 in a ship, or in a house ashore for months — even years — 

 or in a tent, without seeing anything of the outside world, 

 and w^e had both learned to give and take in a way that 

 would astonish many at home. We could thus appre- 

 ciate difRculties that the other had in attaining scientific 

 results Avhich he had secured, knowing full well that if 

 certain results were not attained that it was due to 

 some insuperable difficulty which no layman could fully 

 understand. 



It was tliis tie of Polar brotherhood that drew Wilson 

 and myself together. He was born in 1872, the son of 

 Dr. E. T. Wilson, consulting physician to Cheltenham 

 General Hospital. 



One who knew him best was Dr. A. E. Shipley, Master 

 of Christ's College, Cambridge, and I think I cannot do 



