April ■], 1887] 



NA TURE 



54: 



jSIarch 9, 1884, which were distributed broadcast through- 

 out the country, and eininated from Mr. Vcnnor. He 

 saw clearly that all this harm could only be prevented by 

 increasing the intelligence of the people in scientific 

 matters, and heartily indorsed every effort to diffuse a 

 more correct idea as to what constituted legitimate 

 meteorology. 



Although his duties demanded the maintenance of a 

 great central office at Washington, yet General Ilazcn 

 realised that centralisation could easily be carried too far 

 in scientific matters, and would thus react injuriously upon 

 the work of his office. He was desirous of rapid progress 

 in all directions, and, to secure this, welcome! every 

 prospect of co-operation with other institutions as well as 

 with individuals. One of his first acts was the request for 

 co-operation on the part of the National Academy of 

 Science. He improved the opportunity to help Prof. 

 Langley in the determination of the absorbing power of 

 the atmosphere ; he accepted Prof. King's offer to 

 carry ob;ervers on his balloon voyages ; he heartily 

 furthered Lieut. Greely's efforts to maintain an Inter- 

 . national Polar Station, and joined with the Coast 

 Survey in establishing a similar station under Lieut. 

 Ray at the northern point of Alaska ; he co-operated with 

 the Bureau of Navigation in securing weather reports 

 from the ocean ; he powerfully assisted the Meteorological 

 Society in its labours for the reformation of our com- 

 plicated system of local times, the result of which was 

 the adoption by the country of the present simple system 

 of standard meridians one hour apart. 



Equally successful was he in his efforts to co-operate in 

 various methods of disseminating and utilising the know- 

 ledge obtained by the Weather Bureau for the benefit of 

 the business interests of the country. With the telegraph 

 companies he published the daily telegraph bulletin. 

 Through the railroad companies, he displayed the rail- 

 road train-signals visible to every farmer along the 

 railroads. With local Boards of trade and other business 

 interests he elaborated our system of flood warnings in 

 the river valleys. 



General Hazen was especially clear in his views as to 

 the importance of giving personal credit to each man for 

 his own personal work. Routine work was credited to the 

 assistants in charge and not to the impersonal office. 

 Having assigned a special work to the best man available, 

 he took pains to give him the credit and make him per- 

 sonally responsible for its success, thus securing more 

 enthusiasm in the work. 



This notice of a few prominent features in the intense 

 activity of General Hazen's life seems eulogistic rather 

 than historical ; but the fact is that military life rarely 

 offers a position that requires the promotion of any special 

 science, and still more rarely do official or military circles 

 present an ofticer who so thoroughly desired, as far as 

 allowable, to relax stringent military law and liberally 

 interpret cumbersome official regulations, so that scientific 

 men might successfully promote their special work. 



Washington, February Clevel.\nd Abbe 



SIR WALTER ELLIOT, K.C.S.I., LL.D., F.R.S. 



T)Y the death at an advanced age of Sir Walter Elliot, 

 -'-' we lose one of the few survivors from a group of 

 men who, in the second quarter of the present century, 

 by their contributions to the zoology of British India, 

 laid the foundations of our present knowledge. The 

 subject of the present notice was, however, so widely 

 known for his acquaintance with the history, coins, lan- 

 guages, and ancient literature of Southern India, that his 

 zoological work might easily be overlooked. 



Sir Walter Elliot was born in 1803 at Edinburgh. He 

 was the son of Mr. James Elliot, of Wolfelee, Hawick, 



Roxburghshire, and after being educated at Doncaster, 

 and later at Haileybury, where he received a "highly 

 distinguished" certificate, he entered the East India 

 Company's Madras civil service in 1S20. In that 

 service he held many posts of distinction. From 1822 

 to 1S33 he was assistant to the political agent of the 

 Southern Mahratta country, and during this period he 

 collected the information subsequently embodied in his 

 Catalogue of the Mammalia inhabiting the region, and 

 also commenced the series of archreological studies, some 

 of the first-fruits of which in 1836 were presented to the 

 Royal Asiati.: Society in the shape of a paper on Hindu 

 inscriptions. With this paper were sent two manuscript 

 volumes containing copies of no less than 595 sculptured 

 records from the Southern Mahratta country and the 

 neighbouring territory. 



In 1837 he was private secretary to Lord Elphinstone, 

 then Governor of Madras, and he was subsequently for 

 twelve years a member of the Madras Board of Revenue. 

 The value attached to his linguistic knowledge was shown 

 by his being at one time Canarese translator, and at 

 another acting Persian interpreter to the Government. 

 From 1S49 to 1854 he was Commissioner for the 

 Northern Circars. During this period he made the 

 collection of Cetacea subsequently described by Sir 

 R. Owen in the Transactions of the Zoological So- 

 ciety, vol. vi. Finally he was Senior Member of Council 

 in Madras from 1854 to 1859, when he retired from the 

 service, and returned to pass the remainder of his life at 

 Wolfelee, the residence of many generations of his an- 

 cestors. Almost his last official act in India was, when 

 in charge of the Madras Government in 1858, to take the 

 principal part in the transfer of the Presidency from the 

 rule of the East India Company to the direct government 

 of the Queen. He was created a K. C.S.I, in 1S66, and 

 became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1878, and he 

 was Deputy-Lieutenant of his county. 



In his retirement his attention was much given to 

 numismatics, and despite the complete loss of his eyesight 

 in his later years, he carried to completeness the studies 

 commenced in his " Numismatic Gleanings on South 

 Indian Coins," published in Xh^Madras Journal of Liter- 

 ature and Science for 1857. He brought out in 1S85, 

 with the aid of Mr. Thomas, General Pearse, and other 

 friends, a general work on the "Ancient and Medireval 

 Coins of Southern India." Up to the very last his 

 interest in Oriental literature remained unabated. One 

 of his friends received a letter signed by him and dated 

 March I, the day of his death, containing inquiries as to 

 the forthcoming edition of a Tamil work, and suggesting 

 that the attention of Madras native students should be 

 bestowed upon the early dialects of then- own language. 

 During the last ten years numerous notes by Sir W. 

 Elliot have appeared in the Indian Antiquary, the 

 latest in the .September number of last year. Largely 

 through his efforts the Amravati sculptures, now in the 

 British Museum, were added to the national collection, 

 and this was but one of the valuable additions due to 

 him. His Southern Indian coins, a very large and im- 

 portant series, were presented to the same institution, 

 and his numerous zoological collections enriched the 

 Natural History Museum. 



Although his published papers on zoology give but an im- 

 perfect idea of his contributions to the science, for many of 

 his observations were freely communicated to other natural- 

 ists, and published by them, his " Catalogue of the Species 

 of Mammalia found in the Southern Mahratta Country,'' 

 which appeared in the Madras Journal for 1842, was of 

 unusual merit. It had the peculiar advantage that it 

 was a list, not of museum specimens, but of the wild 

 animals inhabiting the country, several of which, and 

 indeed nearly all the smaller rodents, were discovered 

 by the author. The habits of the larger animals were 

 described from personal observation, not, as has so 



