342 Obituary Notices. [sess. lh. 



OBITUARY NOTICES OF DECEASED FELLOWS, 



Sir Walter Elliot of Wolfelee. By Hu;4li Cleghorn, M.l). 



(Read 8th December 18S7.) 



"We have to record with great regret the death of Sir W. 

 EUiot, a former President of this Society, which occurred at 

 Wolfelee ou 1st March 1887, at tlie venerable age of 8-4 

 years. A notice would have appeared sooner, but consider- 

 able time was needed to collect the leading facts of his long 

 and useful life, since any account of his career must tell of 

 eminent public services and scientific work of a varied and 

 remarkable kind. He was one of the few survivors of a 

 group of distinguished Indian administrators and linguists 

 who, in the first half of this century, laid the foundation 

 of Oriental learning in British India. Such men were Sir 

 W. Jones-Colebrook, H. H. Wilson-Prinsep, Max Mliller, Sir 

 ]\Ionier Williams, Ileinhold Eost, and, I may add. Sir W. 

 ]\Iuir, the honoured Principal of our University. 



Sir Walter- was so widely known for his acquaintance with 

 ancient literature, coins, sculptures, and zoology, that his bota- 

 nical work might easily escape attention. In fact, various 

 notices of the subject of this memoir have appeared written by 

 zoologists, antiquaries, and ethnologists, who have dilated upon 

 his varied and extensive attainments."'' Walter Elliot was 

 born in Edinburgh in 1803, son of James Elliot of Wolfelee, 

 a junior branch of the old Border family Elliot of Lariston. 

 His early education was under a private tutor at home and 

 in Cumberland. Afterwards he went to a school near Don- 

 caster, and then to Haileyljury College, which he left with 

 distinction in 1821, to take up his appointment in the East 

 India Company's Civil Service at Madras. 



He served in the Southern Mahratta country from 1821 to 

 1833, when he returned to Ei>g'land by the Ked Sea. In 

 1826 and 1828 he had personal meetings with Mountstuart 

 Elphinstone and Sir John Midcohii, then Governor of P>om- 

 bay. At the insurrection of KiLLur liis superintending otiicer, 

 Thackeray, father (jf the novelist, was killed, and he was 

 taken jirisorier, and detained several weeks in peril of liis 

 life. iJuring his long public career he kept a diary, and 



* Nature, April 7 (W. T. Blandford); Linn. -S'oc. Proc. (P. Sladen); Indian 

 Antiquari) ; Roy. Asiatic Hoc. Proc. (Sir A. J. Arhutliiiot). 



