VI 



Obituary Notice of Fellotv deceased. 



rural neighbourhood. Now greater London has partially engulfed it, though 

 the boundary of Epping Forest happily bars its further advance in this quarter. 

 A pleasant garden and a field for cows were attached to the house. To accom- 

 modate the growing family additions were made to the house, mainly from my 

 father's own designs, and an agreeable set of rooms was arranged, two studies, 

 an intermediate room, and a workshop where the growing collections were 

 housed and his work was done. In 1871 he acquired, with his brother, the 

 house Highcliff, at Lyme Eegis at the far western end of the Dorset coast. The 

 fine diversified country with glorious coast scenery of this neighbourhood gave 

 him constant and deep pleasure. He laid out the garden afresh with marked 

 success, and made alterations and additions to the house, again from his own 

 plans. Here some of the cooler months were spent each year with keen 

 enjoyment by my father and his family. Unless visitors were staying in the 

 house and some larger expedition was planned, the morning, and often the 

 early afternoon, would be spent by him in scientific work, but time was 

 always allowed for some long country ramble with his children before dinner- 

 time—or rather before dinner — for his enjoyment in the out-of-door life 

 was so great that he was not a model of punctuality. Until the later years 

 of his life he would return to the drawing-room after the pipe which followed 

 dinner, and read aloud himself or listen to reading. He was an excellent 

 reader both of prose and poetry. Novels he enjoyed if not too analytical of 

 " poor human nature." Scott was a favourite, and Stevenson and some of 

 Wilkie Collins'. Kipling's ' Jungle Books ' he greatly enjoyed ; biography 

 and books of travel were also welcome. Later in life, however, he preferred 

 to remain in the smoking-room, and then one of his daughters remained 

 and read with him. Huxley's ' Essays,' works on Geology and Astronomy, 

 and a good deal of other fairly stiff reading -were gone through and well 

 digested by them. 



The other months of the year were largely devoted to business and the 

 public service. As he was able to share the burden of his business with his 

 partners and had more leisure, he took up a variety of public work. In his 

 own religious body he served as clerk to the monthly meeting, administering 

 the business of the Society, and taking a leading part on educational and 

 philanthropic committees. He never spoke in meeting (i.e. in meetings for 

 worship) though he took his turn as reader in the Bible reading with which 

 the Sunday morning session began. He chose his seat at the end of a bench 

 near a doorway looking straight out southward into the meeting-house garden 

 (a but little modified piece of forest land) so that the contemplation of the 

 outer world minded with his inner reflections. I think there must still be 

 the marks and dates, cut after meeting, with his knife in the floorcloth (rather 

 to the scandal of some members), showing the positions reached by the shadow 

 of the top of the doorway at noon on mid-winter and mid-summer Sundays — 

 the latter close to the door, the former, of course, far back in the room. . 



He was a very active member of the West Ham School Board, and it was at 

 his initiative that the Truant School at Fyfield, near Ongar, was built 



