506 NATURE 
[JANUARY I, 1914 
that the mineral industry of the United States 
is in a sound and flourishing condition, and that 
the vast mineral resources of that great country 
are being steadily and profitably developed. 
As to the volumes in which the results of these 
operations are chronicled, it is impossible to do 
more than express admiration for the care and 
attention bestowed upon them, and we can only 
wish that we had in this country a department 
capable of doing anything like similar justice to 
our own British mineral industry. H.-J 
SIR TREVOR LAWRENCE, BART. 
~ IR TREVOR LAWRENCE, late President of 
“7 the Royal Horticultural Society, and some- 
time Treasurer of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 
died at his seat at Burford, Dorking, in his 
eighty-second year, on Monday night, December 
22. Born on December 30, 1831, Sir Trevor was 
educated at Winchester, and afterwards at St. 
Bartholomew’s Hospital, where his father was 
one of the staff and one of the teachers. After 
qualifying as a medical man, Trevor Lawrence 
joined the Indian Medical Service in 1853, seeing 
much active service during the Mutiny. In 1863 
he retired from India, and in 1867 succeeded his 
father as second baronet. In 1869 he married 
Elizabeth, daughter of the late Mr. J. Matthew, 
of Burford, Dorking. From 1875 till 1892 he sat 
in Parliament. 
Always interested in plants, Trevor Lawrence 
became during his Indian service a keen and suc- 
cessful gardener. This taste and talent he exer- 
cised and developed on his return to England, and 
although he was doubtless best 
gardening circles as an orchid grower, there was 
no particular branch of horticulture in which he 
was not keenly interested and in which he was 
not highly successful. Even in that especial 
branch of the craft in which he was deservedly 
famous—the cultivation of orchids—his innate 
love of plants for their own sake, which he appears 
to have inherited from his mother, was very con- 
spicuous. In addition to one of the finest private 
collections of showy sorts, Sir Trevor had at 
Dorking probably the largest private collection 
of the less conspiéuous, but very often more 
scientifically interesting genera and species from 
both hemispheres. 
There was therefore everything that was appro- 
priate in the election of Sir Trevor, in 1885, to 
the presidentship of the Royal Horticultural 
Society. But on Sir Trevor’s part there was also 
a strong strain of chivalry and gallantry in his 
acceptance of this, at that time, thankless post. 
The Society was at a miserably low ebb, with an 
inadequate membership and still more inadequate 
finances. Supported in the struggle which ensued 
by a number of far-sesing and courageous 
colleagues, both against adverse external circum- 
stances and against opposition from within 
the Society, the difficulties were overcome, 
and the assured financial position in which the 
Royal Horticultural Society stands to-day 
NO. 2305, VOL. 92] 
known in | 
| has been largely due to the steadfastness of 
purpose, tact and wisdom of Sir Trevor Lawrence 
during the presidentship of twenty-eight years, 
which ended with his retirement from that position 
on April 1 last. 
Almost as great as the services he was able to 
render to gardening were those which Sir Trevor 
rendered to his own old hospital, the treasurer- 
ship of which he was invited to undertake when 
he retired from Parliament. This post he held 
| during twelve years of financial and other diffi- 
culties. The qualities which had stood him in 
such good stead in the Royal Horticultural Society 
enabled him here again to inaugurate much that 
was useful in the matter of extending the scienti- 
fic equipment of the hospital, of securing for the 
staff some share in its management, and of 
establishing a sounder administrative policy with 
regard to its property. As a member of the 
council of King Edward’s Hospital Fund, Sir 
Trevor was able to do much for the cause of 
hospitals generally. 
A well-known and skilled collector of Chinese 
and European porcelain and the possessor of one 
of the finest collections of Japanese lacquer in 
Britain, Sir Trevor placed students of the latter 
under much obligation by printing for private 
circulation in 1895 a finely illustrated catalogue of 
his collection. A host of exquisite courtesy, and 
| a counseller of great sagacity, Sir Trevor’s death 
will be greatly mourned by a wide circle of 
friends. 
BRITISH ANTARCTIC 
EXPEDITION. 
ie science of geography will enlarge its 
bounds if the expedition to the South Pole, 
planned by Sir Ernest Shackleton, ends success- 
fully. A start is to be made next October from 
Buenos Aires, and the plan proposed is to cross 
the south polar continent from the Weddell Sea, 
on the Atlantic side, to the Ross Sea, touching 
at the South Pole en route—a distance of some 
1700 miles. Altogether the party will number 
forty-two, twelve being actual explorers, and the 
remainder the crews of the two ships that are 
to support the venture, one on each side of the 
Antarctic continent. Of the explorers, six expect 
to cover the whole ground from the point of 
landing on the Weddell Sea to the point of em- 
barkation on the Ross Sea. The other six will 
be divided into two groups: one, composed of a 
biologist, a geologist, and a physicist, will prob- 
ably remain at an experimental station on the 
Weddell Sea side; the other party of three will be 
told off to explore the land to the east, which is 
at present entirely unknown. These two wings 
of the expedition will eventually be taken back 
; to South America, while the party which will 
accompany Sir Ernest across the continent is to 
be met at the Ross Sea base by the second ship 
from New Zealand, whither it will take them. 
For the outward journey the Aurora has been 
chosen. Both this and the sister vessel will depend 
A NEW 
. 
