40 
with such kindly insistence, that even the most indifferent could 
not fail to catch his enthusiasm 
He married in 1871, Margaret Susan, the second daughter of 
the late W. 8S. Lowndes- Stone, of Brightwell, in Oxfordshire, 
who, with an only son, Colonel Henry Cecil Elwes, D.S8.O., 
M.V.O., survives him. 
Amongst scientific men now living none perhaps had a longer 
or more intimate acquaintance with Elwes than Sir William 
Thiselton-Dyer, who became Assistant Director of Kew in 1875 
soon after Elwes entered into relationships with the establish- 
ment. We are indebted to him for the following communica- 
tion :—“‘ It is just half a century since I made Elwes’s acquain- 
tance when he was a young subaltern in the Scots Guards and 
I have always thought, at that time, the handsomest man I had 
ever: come across.’ 
s main life-work lay amongst Birds and Lepidoptera. He 
was ae to Botany through horticulture and arboriculture, 
but never acquired a technical knowledge of Botany. The 
botanical part of the Monogr ‘aph of Liliums was done by Baker 
and the scientific side of ‘The Trees of Great Britain and 
Treland’ was the work of Augustine Henry. But Elwes on his 
part spared neither time, labour nor expense in the effort to 
attain accuracy in the matters of fact. For instance he went to 
Busaco in Portugal i in 1909 solely to investigate the history of the 
so-called ‘ Cedar of Goa,’ Cupresses lusitanica, which had been 
introduced from Mexico 
is paper in 1873 ‘On the Geographical Distribution of 
Asiatic Birds’ is an important landmark in the literature of 
Distribution. I quote what I have stated in my article on ‘ Dis- 
tribution of sSlemeaniess in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia 
ritannica ”’ 
** Of the vegetation of China till recently very little has been 
known. In 1873, Elwes pointed out (in the paper cited above) 
that the Himalayan avifauna extended into North-west China and 
established the Himalayo-Chinese subregion. Shortly afterwards 
the collection of Prejewalsky confirmed it for the flora. And 
we know that, excluding the southern tropical area, it has the 
same character throughout the whole of China proper. We 
may therefore regard the Himalayan flora as a western extension 
of the Chinese rather than the latter as a —o of the 
former.” 
« T well remember Sir Joseph Hooker’ s excitement when he 
heard of Prejewalsky’s discovery.* It is not surprising that 
Elwes paid four visits to India and two to China. His establish- 
ment of the Himalayo-Chinese region for birds would have alone 
secured his election to the Royal Seely. if _ ae niger in 
entomology had not also earned i 
+b o See thins Proc. eid Geog. Soe. 1878, on Plant Distri- 
ution, an ongolia, Prejewals Translated b E.D ’ 
‘1876; vol. ii. pp. 85, 87. * nee reat 
