36 
Ill._HENRY JOHN ELWES. 
We are indebted to the Editors of the Gardeners’ Chronicle 
for permission to use a very interesting obituary notice of Mr- 
Elwes which was written by Mr. F. R. 8. Balfour and appeared 
in that journal on Dec. 2, 1922. Except for a few interpolations 
it is reproduced as originally written :— 
In the death of Henry John Elwes on Nov. 26, 1922, at 
Colesborne, at the age of seventy-six, there passed away one 
whose name is well and widely known and a figure very familiar 
to all at Kew. To state that he was perhaps the greatest living 
oe of the day, an authority second to no one in Europe 
n trees, a lepidopterist whose collections enrich our national 
museum at South Kensington, the author of what is still the 
authoritative work on Lilies—though published so long ago as 
1880, and a big game hunter and ornithologist of great repute, 
by no means exhausts the list of his activities. 
For nearly fifty years Elwes was a valued and regular 
correspondent of Kew and a generous contributor to the collec- 
tions. His first gift to the establishment was one of fifteen 
herbaceous plants on July 18, 1872; his last on August 5, 1922. 
After leaving Eton Elwes spent five years in the Scots Guards, 
but the spirit of adventure which was strong in him to the end 
caused him to resign his captain’s commission and begin that 
life of scientific travel and adventure from which such a rich 
harvest has resulted. His journeys were made in Turkey, Asia 
Minor, oe in India four times, in North America and Mexico 
hree times ; hile ; in Russia and Siberia three times ; in Formosa, 
China and Ja dia twice ; in Nepal and Sikkim. He was the official 
representative of Great Britain at the Botanical and Horticultural 
Congresses at Amsterdam in 1877, and at Petrograd in 1884. 
He was the Scientific member of the Indian Embassy to Tibet 
in 1886. Few, if any, men knew every country of Europe so 
well as he, and he greatly benefited by his excellent knowledge 
of French and German. For nine years Elwes was a member 
of a wild-boar shooting syndicate in the Ardennes, and he stalked 
chamois regularly in the Austrian Tyrol. 
He was a past president of the Royal English Arboricultural 
Society, and of the Entomological Society of London; past 
vice-president of the Royal Horticultural Society, and a Victoria 
Medallist. Im 1921-he was elected president of the British 
Ornithological Union, having been a member for 55 years. In 
1897 the Royal Society seed him a Fellow. ; 
- Elwes’ first publication appeared in the Zbis of 1869, the 
subject being “The Bird Stations of the Outer Hebrides.” Four 
years later, in June, 1873, he published in the Proceedings of the 
Zoological Society his paper “‘ On the Geographical Distribution of 
Asiatic Birds,” his most important contribution to Ornithology, 
and to it he attributed his subsequent Fellowship of the Royal 
