GERALD EDWIN HAMILTON 
BARRETT-HAMILTON 
AN APPRECIATION 
N the last number of the Azstory of British Mammats there 
| appeared a beautiful appreciation of Edward A. Wilson, 
the artist and companion in death of Captain Scott, 
written by the author of the work, and now, to the deep 
regret of all who knew him, the very next number of his 
much-loved book has to be prefaced by a notice of Barrett- 
Hamilton’s own death, a death curiously parallel to that of 
his friend. The two, as Barrett-Hamilton tells us, had known 
each other from their college days, had both wished to go 
on Scott’s first Antarctic expedition, and each had helped the 
other in the scientific work which resulted from that first 
expedition—while from the second there was to be no return 
for Wilson. But a short period elapsed, and Barrett- Hamilton 
himself accepted a somewhat similar mission—to go to South 
Georgia to observe the whale fishery now being carried on 
in high Southern latitudes with so much success as to threaten 
the extermination of the whales; to study and note the 
characters and habits of these animals, and to get what 
scientific collections he could in that almost Antarctic region. 
All had gone well to the end of the year, but in January the 
news was telegraphed home that he had died of heart-failure 
on the 17th of that month. Barrett-Hamilton, like Wilson, 
died on duty in obedience to the dictates of that spirit of 
scientific enterprise which had already caused the loss of 
his friend. 
1 
