334 Obituary — The Right Hon. Baron Avehury. 



THE RIGHT HON. BARON AVEBURY, 



D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S., Etc. 



Born April 30, 1834. Died May 28, 1913. 



In the death of Lord Avebury natural science has lost one of its 

 most enthusiastic and cultured disciples. Born at Eaton Place, 

 London, he was the son of Sir John William Lubbock, 3rd Baronet, 

 E.R. S., F.G.S., a distinguished mathematician and astronomer, who 

 died in 1865. John Lubbock succeeded to the baronetcy in that 

 year, and was created Baron Avebury in 1900. He received a school 

 education at Eton, but no University training, as his services were 

 wanted before he had attained tlie age ot 15 in the banking-house 

 of Robarts, Lubbock & Co., Lombard Street, an establishment of 

 which his father was then the Head. John Lubbock became a partner 

 in the firm in 1856 and succeeded to the chief position on the death 

 of his father. It will be unnecessary here to refer in particular to 

 his great business capacity and to the services he rendered to 

 commerce, the arts, and to education in general. As a Member of 

 Parliament he represented Maidstone and afterwards the University 

 of London, taking an active part in promoting the Ancient Monu- 

 ments Act, the Open Spaces Act, and many other measures. 



Interest in the study of natural history was developed in Lubbock 

 at an early age, and the proximity of his home at High Elms, near 

 Farnborougli, to that of Darwin at Down, in Kent, no doubt greatly 

 influenced the character of his recreative pursuits. In course of time 

 he acquired a wide range of knowledge in archaeology, entomology, 

 botany, and geology, and we may be content here to refer to his 

 researches on the first and last of these subjects. 



One of his earliest discoveries, made in 1855 in company with 

 Charles Kingsley, was that of the skull of a musk-ox in a gravel-pit 

 close to Maidenhead railway station, and the specimen was described 

 by Owen in the following year as the first example which had come 

 under his notice from a British locality. In 1860 and again in 1862 

 and 1863 he joined Prestwich and others in excursions to the flint- 

 implement-bearing districts of Amiens and Abbeville, and in 1861 he 

 spent a holiday in Switzerland with Tyndall and Huxley. The 

 knowledge thereby obtained stimulated those further studies which 

 led in one direction to the publication in 1865 of Lubbock's Pre- 

 historic Times, as illustrated by Ancient Remains and the JIanners and 

 Customs of Modern Savages. This work was followed in 1870 by 

 The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man. Both 

 works have attained to the sixth edition. It may further be 

 mentioned that he was associated with Huxley, Busk, and others 

 as one of the editors of the Natural History Review (1861-5). In 

 1867 he brought before the Geological Society a paper "On the 

 Parallel Roads of Glen Roy", advocating their formation in a lake, 

 the waves in which did not arrest but threw down to lower levels 

 the angular debris of the hill-slopes. His interest in Switzerland 

 led to many journeys to that country and to the publication in 1896 

 of The Scenery of Sivitzerland and the Causes to which it is due. Of 

 this work a fourth edition has been issued. A companion volume on 



