GERALD EDWIN HAMILTON 

 BARRETT-HAMILTON 



AN APPRECIATION 



IN the last number of the History of British Mammals there 

 appeared a beautiful appreciation of Edward A. Wilson, 

 the artist and companion in death of Captain Scott, 

 written by the author of the work, and now, to the deep 

 regret of all who knew him, the very next number of his 

 much-loved book has to be prefaced by a notice of Barrett- 

 Hamilton's own death, a death curiously parallel to that of 

 his friend. The two, as Barrett- Hamilton tells us, had known 

 each other from their college days, had both wished to go 

 on Scott's first Antarctic expedition, and each had helped the 

 other in the scientific work which resulted from that first 

 expedition — ^while from the second there was to be no return 

 for Wilson. But a short period elapsed, and Barrett- Hamilton 

 himself accepted a somewhat similar mission — to go to South 

 Georgia to observe the whale fishery now being carried on 

 in high Southern latitudes with so much success as to threaten 

 the extermination of the whales ; to study and note the 

 characters and habits of these animals, and to get what 

 scientific collections he could in that almost Antarctic region. 

 All had gone well to the end of the year, but in January the 

 news was telegraphed home that he had died of heart-failure 

 on the 17th of that month. Barrett- Hamilton, like Wilson, 

 died on duty in obedience to the dictates of that spirit of 

 scientific enterprise which had already caused the loss of 

 his friend. 



