XXIV 



Board of Trade. However, in 1888, by reason of the increased 

 vitality exhibited by electric lighting companies, he found his duties 

 becoming so onerous that he resigned his post at the Board of Trade, 

 and devoted the whole of his attention to the War Office. He 

 received the thanks of the Board for the valuable services he had 

 rendered the department. 



He gave most arduous work to the organisation, both in personnel 

 and materiel, of the submarine defences. He served on many com- 

 mittees appointed to report upon special questions of defences. He 

 represented the War Department at many electrical exhibitions at 

 home and in foreign countries. 



He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1891. 



On the 1st July, .1890, he had been promoted to the rank of 

 Colonel iu the army ; and on the 30th May, 1891, had been gazetted 

 a civil C.B. 



On the 1st July, 1891, he was appointed Royal Engineer member 

 of the Ordnance Committee. His health, however, failed, and he 

 retired on a pension on the 7th December, 1892. At first, the rest 

 appeared to act beneficially, but early in 1894 he caught a chill, from 

 which his delicate constitution never recovered. He gradually 

 became weaker, and passed away on 1st November, 1894, at Prospect 

 House, Omeath, Ireland. 



He was buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin. 



Armstrong was a man of high personal character, of affectionate 

 disposition and gentle manners, and the most pleasant of companions. 

 He was greatly beloved in his own corps, in which he had numerous 

 friends, and also by those with whom he was associated in the many 

 important posts he held. By them he is deeply mourned. 



P. A. M. 



BISSET HAWKINS was born in London, in the year 1796, and was 

 at the time of his death, on December 7, 1894, the oldest Fellow of 

 our Society, having been elected on December 18, 1834, as well as 

 by some fourteen years the oldest Fellow of the Royal College of 

 Physicians. 



Dr. Hawkins' place in the history of science and of medicine is a.s 

 a student of public medicine, at a time when sanitary authorities 

 and general register offices had not been devised. Returning to 

 London, after his graduation at Oxford in 1825, he presently took 

 an interest in medical statistics, a subject then in its infancy, and in 

 a volume enlarging his Gulstonian Lectures, of 1828, he brought 

 together what records of disease and death were obtainable about 

 various communities, and found in them to use his own words- 

 proof of the empire of human art over disease. In 1831, when 

 cholera was threatening St. Petersburg, he made a serviceable col- 



