136 NATURAL SCIENCE. February, 



Biological Station at Millport are continuing to improve. Dr. Reid,. 

 whom you saw at Fern Bank, has lately contributed ;^5oo towards a 

 new stone building for the Station. I do not remember whether I 

 told you that the visitors to the Station last summer were over 6,000! 

 and there have been a great many workers at the Station during early 

 spring and the summer months, who all give excellent testimonials 

 expressing their opinion that no better situation than Millport could 

 be selected for a biological station. The purity of the water and the 

 varied character of the bottom of the neighbouring sea, the richness of 

 animal and vegetable life, the absence of strong currents, and well 

 sheltered bays, make boating safe and pleasant, and where dredging 

 is concerned it is more expeditious and agreeable, and not the least 

 [advantage is] the large fleet of boats, and there is no place in the 

 United Kingdom where the hire is so cheap — three pence per hour 

 for a boat with oars. 



"I have been reading the life of Darwin, by his son. He speaks 

 often of his blessed pigeons and his pet pangenesis, and I fear my 

 discourses will come to have an uncontrollable tendency to drift on to 

 the Biological Station of Millport." 



This summer he had the satisfaction of turning the first sod for 

 the erection of the new building. In its completion and prosperous 

 employment for the furtherance of science, Robertson will have a 

 memorial more to his own liking than a monument in Westminster 

 Abbey. 



Besides being a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of 

 the Geological Societies of Glasgow and London, he received 

 distinctions that were none of his own seeking, and that took his 

 modest nature by surprise. At fifty-nine he found himself an 

 honorary Fellow of the Imperial Royal Zoologico-Botanical Society 

 of Vienna. The Natural History Society of Glasgow chose him for 

 its President when he was eighty-one. At eighty-eight he was made 

 an honorary D. C. L. of the University of Glasgow — a fit and graceful 

 crowning in his native city, among friends who knew and loved him^ 

 of his memorable career. T. R. R. S. 



Thomas Gwyn Empey Elger, whose excellent handbook, "The 

 Moon," we reviewed in August, 1895 (vol. vii., p. 138), died at Bedford 

 on January gth, at the age of 59. Besides being an astronomer of 

 repute, he was the chief authority on Bedfordshire archaeology, and his 

 collection of implements, from palaeolithic to Norman times, found in 

 the gravels of the Ouse Valley, was one of value. He was intimately 

 connected with the Library and the Literary and Scientific Institute of 

 Bedford, also with the Archaeological and Natural History Societies 

 of the county. In his profession of civil engineer, Mr. Elger had laid 

 down railways in Denmark, and between King's Cross and Edgware 

 Road. London, and had been engaged in many similar works of 

 importance. 



