56 
V.—MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
Mr. R. Giti.—We learn that Mr. R. Gill, whose appointment 
as a Curator in the Agricultural Department of Southern Nigeria 
was recorded in K.B. 1909, p. 315, has been appointed an Assistant 
Superintendent of Agriculture in that Department. 
J. S. Suarer.—John Samuel Slater was the third son of 
the late Rev. Samuel Slater, D.D., Rector of Stenigot, Lincoln, 
and some time Headmaster of Bishop Cotton School, Simla. He 
was born in Calcutta in 1850, educated at Pocklington Grammar 
School, Yorkshire, and Bishop Cotton School, Simla. He graduated 
in 1870 at the Thomason Civil Engineering College, Rurki, 
obtaining the Gold Medal for Mathematics. The same year he was 
appointed to the Public Works Department of the Government of 
India and served at Dera Ghazi Khan and other places in the 
Punjab. : 
In 1875 he was appointed Professor of Engineering at the Presi- 
dency College, Calcutta, and when the Engineering Department. of 
that College was formed into an independent residential Engineering 
College at Sibpur he took a leading part in its organisation, became 
one of the original members of its staff and was eventually 
appointed Principal in 1891. 
inaugurated a scheme of modern education for the District 
was appointed Inspector of Schools of the Rajshahi Division and in 
1901 officiated as head of the Educational Department of Bengal ; 
in 1904 he was incapacitated by a serious illness which necessitated 
his retirement from India in that year. 
Slater was responsible for teaching Astronomy to the students of 
the Engineering College and was always keenly interested in that 
science. In 1891 while on leave he devised and patented an 
armillary sphere which has proved of great value for instructional 
es. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical 
ociety in 1892. 
: r his retirement Slater devoted himself enthusiastically to an 
investigation of the pollen of plants and prepared by micro-photo- 
graphy a large number of enlarged photographs of pollen grains. 
In accordance with a wish which the deceased had expressed, the 
whole of his specimens and photographs were presented by his 
executors to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 
e married in 1873 Jessie Frances, only daughter of Surgeon- 
Major John Bean, attached to the Royal Irish Fusiliers, by whom 
he had a son, deceased, and a daughter who is married to Mr. B. 
Heaton, the present Principal of the Sibpur Engineering College. 
He died at Ealing on 7th April, 1911, aged 61. Ba 
W. Don.—We learn with regret, through the Colonial Office, 
of the death of Mr. William Don, Curator in the Agricult 
Department of Southern Nigeria, on December 10th, 1911. Mr. Don 
