LAST ILLNESS 291 



in the Spring of the following year. The Professor 

 continued to keep up his frequent correspondence with 

 a number of friends ; his memory was unimpaired and 

 his interest in other people's doings was as keen as ever 

 it was, but he was not fit for further work. In May, 

 1907, he was beset by a serious attack of dropsy, his 

 first real illness in seventy-eight years, and he tried to 

 look upon it in his customary philosophical way. 



I am sorry to say I have been laid up now for some 

 weeks with a most obstinate dropsical attack, which 

 defies the strongest drugs the doctors have been dosing 

 me with. I am almost thinking of sending to Holland 

 for a Dutch engineer to come and drain me, after which 

 he can turn his hand to our Fens, where I hear there are 

 just now hundreds of acres under water — whether due to 

 the bursting of a bank I do not know.* 



A few days later, when he knew that his illness 

 would be his last, he wrote to Mr. Harvie-Brown : — 



M.C.C., 

 May 29, 1907. 



My dear H.-B., 



For the first time in my life I find myself 

 writing to you as a serious invalid, for though my 

 doctor professes to be hopeful of the result, I can't say 

 that I feel so at all, but that a stubborn attack of 

 dropsy vhich took me some weeks ago means to carry 

 me ofi". I am thankful to say that so far it is not 

 attended by any pain — though from weakness there is 

 considerable amount of inconvenience, which must be 

 expected — but I have much — ^very much — to be thank- 

 ful for, and indeed have received blessings innumerable. 

 I wish I could have lived to tell " The Story of the 

 Gare-fowl" and "The Bustard and Britain," for which 

 I have laid in a vast stock of material, but perhaps 



* Letter to W. Eagle-Clarke, May 21, 1907. 



