242 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



At the Council Meeting, on the 13th December, a unanimous 

 wish was expressed that the Secretary should, in the name of 

 the Society, convey to Lady Balfour their deep sympathy and 

 the feeling of profound regret with which the news of the passing 

 away of an honoured member had been received. 



Henry J. Elwes.^ 



In the death of Henry John Elwes, on the 26th of November, 

 at his place Colesborne in Gloucestershire, at the age of seventy- 

 six, there passed away one whose name is well and widely 

 known. To state that he was perhaps the greatest living 

 traveller of the day, an authority second to no one in Europe on 

 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. 



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, Tibet, in India four times ; in North America and Mexico 

 three times; in Chile; in Russia and Serbia three times; in 

 Formosa, China, and Japan 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, and shot elk several times in Norway. 



He was a past president of the Royal English Arboricultural 

 Society, and of the Entomological Society of London ; past vice- 



^ Reprinted, with minor additions, from The Gardeners' Chronicle, by kind 

 permission of the Editor. 



