130 Obituary. 



SUETONIUS HENRY OFFICER. 

 Died 26th July, 1883. 



Suetonius Henry Officer was the third son of Sir Robert Officer, 

 of Tasmania, and was born at New Norfolk, in that colony, in the 

 year 1830. He was sent to Edinburgh for his education, and was 

 destined for the Navy, but after entering a military school for a 

 short time he followed the bent of his own inclination, and returned 

 to the colonies, where he and his brother founded a fine station on 

 the River Murray. For many years his life was the busy and enter- 

 prising one of a pioneer squatter, but he reaped the fruits of it in 

 gathering a fine freehold property round him. He had always been 

 of a scientific turn, and devoted much of his attention to the ques- 

 tion of irrigation and rainfall ; for nearly twenty years continuously 

 he forwarded to the Sydney Observatory daily observations of the 

 rainfall and of the height of the River Murray. His arrangements 

 for the irrigation of his own lands were ingenious, and he did his best 

 to impress on his neighbours the desirability of adopting similar 

 means of turning their dry lands into green pastures. He was 

 extremely interested in the question of acclimatisation, and took a 

 large share in the practical work necessary in carrying it on. He 

 was the first to acclimatise the ostrich in Australia, and by the 

 sacrifice of time, labour, and money he had the satisfaction of seeing 

 the industry settled on a lucrative basis. He was in his later life 

 devoted to astronomy, and had a fine telescope, with which he did a 

 little amateur work. In 1881 he gave up the personal superin- 

 tendence of his station, and fixed his residence in Melbourne, but his 

 health was then too much broken for him to attend the meetings of 

 our Society, or to undertake any work for us. 



A brief illness terminated a life of useful industry on the evening 

 of the 26th July, 1883. Though not in any strict sense of the word 

 a scientific man, he had the happy faculty of making scientific work 

 a relaxation and amusement amid a busy life ; and of turning that 

 knowledge, whose acquisition gave him so great a pleasure, into 

 a means of profit and advantage to his neighbours and the whole 

 community. 



