NATURE 



[June 



1913 



The other publications of the Eugenics Record 

 Office are their octavo bulletins. Of these, eight 

 have appeared, three dealing with the inheritance 

 of insanity. Special attention may be directed to 

 that of Dr. Cotton, the medical director of the 

 New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane 

 (Bulletin No. S, 1912). E. H. J. S. 



LORD AVEBURY, F.R.S. 



LORD AVEBURY, whose death on May 28 we 

 recorded last week with regret, was a many- 

 sided man, one of those gifted men who, without 

 making any very profound advance in science, yet 

 succeeded in making science acceptable and even 

 welcome to the ordinary man. He was a banker 

 by profession, and an antiquary, a politician, a 

 man of science and of letters by inclination. He 

 was born in London on April 30, 1K34, the eldest 

 son of Sir John William Lubbock, third baronet. 

 His school was Eton, which, however, he left at 

 a schoolboy age to enter his father's banking busi- 

 ness. Throughout his life Lord Avebury, or, as 

 he was for many years better known, Sir John 

 Lubbock — he succeeded his father in 1865 — showed 

 a great capacity for steady, plodding work, not 

 only in the City, but in politics, municipal adminis- 

 tration, and in scientific and archaeological re- 

 search, and his activities were of the widest. 



In 1870 Sir John Lubbock was returned for the 

 borough of Maidstone, and he held this seat for 

 ten years. In 1872 he became vice-chancellor of 

 the University of London, and eight years later 

 he was elected member for that university, and 

 for the next twenty years he represented this seat 

 of learning. He was active as a Parliamentarian, 

 taking an especial interest in questions of educa- 

 tion and social reform. He made a particularly- 

 good university representative, being a man of 

 learning as well as of affairs. Amongst the many 

 good causes he advocated, perhaps the establish- 

 ment of bank holidays was the one most widely 

 known and the one which will preserve his name 

 the longest. In 1900 he was raised to the peerage 

 as the first Lord Avebury, and it is characteristic 

 of him that he chose a title intimately connected 

 with archaeology. 



For many years Lord Avebury was a neighbour 

 of Charles Darwin at Down, Kent, and it may 

 have been their friendship that led to his interest 

 in "Ants, Bees, and Wasps"; "The Senses, 

 Instincts, and Intelligence of Animals"; "The 

 Collembola and Thysanura " ; " Flowers, Fruits, 

 and Leaves," and in "The Origin and Meta- 

 morphoses of Insects," as five of his most illumina- 

 ting books are entitled. He and his helpers added 

 materially to our knowledge of the habits and 

 instincts of social and other insects, and to our 

 acquaintance with the activitv of many forms of 

 vegetable growth. His work, indeed, did much 

 to pave the way for the great interest now taken 

 in insects, especially at present in relation to the 

 conveyance of disease. 



But Lord Avebury by no means confined his 

 attention to biological studies. He was an expert 

 NO. 2275, VOL. 91] 



on banking; he was the first president of the 

 Institute of Bankers, president of the London 

 Chamber of Commerce, and for twenty-five years 

 he was secretary of the London Bankers Associa- 

 tion and president of the Central Association of 

 Bankers. For five years he was president of the 

 London Chamber of Commerce, and he published 

 important treatises on coins and currency, and on 

 municipal and national trading. His was a very 

 steadying influence on the commercial world. 

 Without having the dominant influence of a Pier- 

 pont Morgan, or the great American banker's 

 power of handling a financial crisis, he had an 

 infinite capacity for mastering detail, and a great 

 gift for bearing in mind many things of importance 

 which are apt to be overlooked in the ordinary 

 course of business. 



Lord Avebury took much interest in municipal 

 government, and was vice-chairman of the London 

 County Council in 1889 and 1890, and chairman 

 from 1890 to 1892. Nor must it be forgotten that 

 he was principal of the London Working Men's Col- 

 lege, and did most admirable work in connection 

 with that institution. His "Hundred Best Books" 

 was the result of a lecture delivered at the college. 

 Few men have attained eminence in so 

 many subjects, an eminence which would 

 satisfy many a specialist. Part of this eminence 

 was due to a tjift of style. An American con- 

 temporary once described him as an "elegant 

 British writer on bugs." Even his most 

 strictlv scientific monographs were written 

 in an engaging manner, and none more so 

 than his " Origin of Civilisation and the Primi- 

 tive Condition of Man," which is now in its sixth 

 edition. Perhaps of his scientific works " The 

 Scenery of England" and "The Scenery of 

 Switzerland " are the most enduring. The former 

 is still recommended by the teachers in many a 

 university as a most admirable introduction to the 

 i study of geology. He seemed to have an instinct 

 for knowing "what the public wants," and his 

 more popular literary works appealed widely to 

 "the man in the street." "The Pleasures of 

 Life," "The Use of Life," "The Beauties of 

 Nature," sold by the hundreds of thousands — in 

 fact, a quarter of a million of "The Pleasures of 

 Life " have already been disposed of, apart from 

 more than forty foreign editions. These books, 

 though they partake of the nature of reprinted 

 commonplace books, certainly hit the popular taste, 

 and were in their influence wholly healthy and 

 helpful. 



In our restricted columns it would be impossible 

 to enumerate the numerous associations over which 

 Lord Avebury presided. He was, indeed, to para- 

 phrase an Elizabethan phrase, " President General 

 to the Age." He was president of the British 

 Association in its jubilee year, and president of 

 the Entomological, Ethnological, Linnean, Statis- 

 tical, African, and Ray Societies ; president of the 

 Anthropological Institute, of the International In- 

 stitute of Sociology, and of the International 

 Association for Prehistoric Archaeology ; of the 

 International Association of Zoology,' and of the 



