August 4, 1904] 



NA TURE 



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classical investigations were embodied in his reports, 

 e.g. into diphtheria, diseases of the cotton famine, 

 pulmonary diseases, &c. In 1862-63 an important in- 

 quiry was undertaken into dangerous industries, in 

 1S63 a survey of the hospitals of the United Kingdom. 

 In 1865-66 he had to establish the organisation to deal 

 with cholera, in 1871 that to deal with the great 

 <^pideniic of small-pox, and in 1S70 he initiated a scheme 

 for laboratory work in public health. He was an un- 

 compromising opponent of the useless practice of 

 ■quarantine. 



■Simon's resignation in 1876 was brought about by 

 the Local Government Board Act of 1871 creating the 

 Local Government Board. In Simon's opinion large 

 questions of medical policy affecting the whole 

 country could only be adequately dealt with by a 

 Ministry of Health, a view which is widely held by the 1 

 medical profession at present, and, having allowed time 

 to see how the new .Acts would work, he retired dis- 

 couraged and disheartened. It is true that the Medical 

 Officer of the Local Government Board and its staff 

 now have duties and responsibilities far wider and 

 more numerous than thev were at the date of the 

 creation of the Board, but still a great opportunity was | 

 missed. In 1890 he published his great work on I 

 ^' English Sanitary Institutions." j 



.Simon numbered among his friends many of the 

 greatest men of the nineteenth century — Darwin, j 

 Buckle, G. H. Lewes, Kingsley, Renan, Tennyson, 

 ■Rossetti, Burne-Jones and many others. He was in 1878 

 president of the Roval College of Surgeons, and was 

 the recipient of numerous other honours. He has gone 

 to his rest honoured of all men, and his name will ever 

 live in the annals of sanitary science. 



R. T. Hewlett. 



A BANKER NATURALIST. 



TJY the sudden death of Mr. Henry Evans on 

 -*-' July 23 the Midlands have lost a well-known and 

 wealthy banker, and the West Highlands of Scotland 

 an equally well-known deer-stalker, yachtsman and 

 naturalist. Born in 1831, he was educated at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, graduated there, and was a mem- 

 ber of the Senate of the Universitv to the end of his 

 life, coming up from time to time to record his vote on 

 matters of importance. Early in his career he appears 

 to have developed a love of natural history pursuits, for 

 -while an undergraduate he became an associate of the 

 Ray Club, of which there are only six at a time, chosen 

 on account of some proved zeal in these studies. He 

 took at that time to entomology, and made a collection 

 of British Lepidoptera. Even up to the end of his life, 

 when he had long abandoned these early predilections, 

 he was still proud of his insect cabinet, and especially 

 of the numerous and fine specimens which it included 

 of the now extinct English large copper butterfly. 

 Being the youngest son of a banker, he naturally be- 

 came a partner in his father's bank, that of Messrs. 

 \V. and S. Evans and Co., of Derby, and on its amalga- 

 mation with another firm he was made a director of the 

 new company, Crompton Evans L'nion Bank. But 

 though a shrewd and capable man of business, he 

 never mingled in public affairs. The leisure of his 

 younger years was largely given to rifle-shooting, in 

 which he grew to be one of the best shots in the 

 country. He competed at the Wimbledon meetings of 

 the National Rifle Association until a lamentable acci- 

 dent occurred to him at one of the practices, when 

 the rifle of a companion was unwittingly discharged 

 against his leg. Three successive amputations were 



NO. 18 14, VOL. 70] 



necessitated, and he had to go up on crutches to receive 

 a prize which he had won. This disaster, however, 

 was not allowed to deprive him of his favourite sport. 

 He had become an expert shot among the red deer of 

 the Scottish forests and the seals of the coast of Conne- 

 mara, and with indomitable courage he now availed 

 himself of the help of a pony and continued his cam- 

 paigns among the mountains with more success than 

 ever. In one season he fired fifty-two shots and killed 

 fifty deer. After renting various tracts of ground in 

 the Highlands, he finally, in 1875, leased the forest 

 which comprises the extensive mountain ground in the 

 centre of the island of Jura. Choosing a tract of bare 

 moorland that sloped down to the sea, he built there a 

 comfortable mansion-house, surrounding it with trees 

 and shrubs and flowers, covering it with roses, and in- 

 geniously devising expedients that baffled the Atlantic 

 blasts and enabled his vegetation to bloom and spread. 

 This charming Highland retreat became his home for 

 some months every season for nearly thirty years, and 

 he lingered longer there as time went on until 

 eventually he spent more than half of each year in 

 Jura. But though deer-stalking was the original and 

 predominant motive for these prolonged northern 

 sojourns, he was far more than a mere sportsman. His 

 early love of natural history pursuits found an ample 

 field' for development in his island home, but it was to 

 the birds that he now gave his attention. Gifted with 

 excellent eyesight, Mr. Evans was an acute and 

 accurate observer. The rapidity and exactness of his 

 recognition of birds on the wing were so remarkable 

 that to friends who accompanied him it almost seemed 

 as if he were the happy possessor of another sense 

 beyond the number allotted to ordinary mortals. He 

 made his mountains and moors in Jura a perfect para- 

 dise for wild birds. No gun or trap was ever allowed 

 to be used against them, and everything was done that 

 would induce them to frequent the district. 



But it was not only in his own forest that Mr. Evans 

 watched the habits of wild birds. He fitted out a 

 steam yacht, the Aster, of 250 tons, on which he usually 

 spent a month or two every year, cruising around the 

 coasts and islands of the west and north of Scotland. 

 He was thus able to gratify his passionate love of cliff 

 scenery and his delight in the crowded breeding haunts 

 of the northern sea-fowl. There are few precipices and 

 inlets in the west and north of Scotland which he had 

 not visited and about which he had not some natural 

 history record to tell. He used to keep jottings of 

 these observations. But he had no ambition to be an 

 author. The retiring disposition which kept him from 

 taking part in public affairs prevented him also from 

 publishing any account of what he saw. All that he 

 observed,"however, was freely communicated to those 

 whom it would interest. Some of his observations 

 have thus been made generally known, but his 

 numerous unpublished notes on the distribution of 

 birds all over the west of Scotland would doubt- 

 less furnish valuable material to zoologists in- 

 terested in this subject. Besides shooting his red 

 deer in Jura, he studied them as p. four-footed com- 

 munity living isolated under special conditions. _ He 

 embodied his observations and statistics in a little 

 pamphlet printed some years ago, but only for private 

 distribution, and entitled "Jura Red Deer." Before 

 surrendering his forest to the landlord he brought the 

 records of deer-life up to the end of his tenancy and 

 embodied them in an interleaved copy of the pamphlet. 

 His experience had enabled him to gather together a 

 good number of valuable facts. It is much to be 

 desired that the completed pamphlet should be care- 

 fully revised by a competent editor and published as a 



