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OBITUARY NOTICE. 



Major- General Sir William Crossman, K.C.M.G. By 

 Sir George B. Douglas, Bart., Springwood Park. 



There is no doubt that it is socially, rather than scientifically, 

 that Sir William Crossman — whose death, at the age of 

 seventy, occurred in April 1901 — will be remembered by 

 the members of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. A 

 naturalist in any strict sense of the word he certainly was 

 not ; for, supposing that he had once known them, he had 

 forgotten during his long residence in China and Japan 

 even the local names of common birds and plants. On the 

 other hand, I have seldom known a man who had deeper 

 or more unfeigned enjoyment of the beauties of natural 

 scenery. The contrast of the sheltered wooded banks of 

 Tweed or Teviot after the wind-swept links of Holy Island 

 was in particular an unfailing source of pleasure to him. 

 Among the subjects studied by the Club, his chief interest 

 was in archaeology — notably in such undertakings as the 

 excavation of the Roman station of Aesica. The excavation 

 of the monastic buildings at Holy Island was carried out 

 under his personal superintendence, and occupied him much. 

 But,, indeed, everything connected with the history of his 

 island-domain was his hobby, and at the time of the death 

 of the first Lady Crossman, in 1898, he had even made some 

 progress in compiling a History of Lindisfarne. Had he 

 completed it, it would have been a work of conscientious 

 research. But after his loss, he travelled for a year, and 

 thQ MS. was then abandoued, and never I think resumed, 



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