Volume XI 
MAY, 1917 
No. 4 
W. R. MACDONELL. 
Born October 16, 1852. Died May 15, 1916 
For the third time the hand of death has fallen heavily on this Journal. 
Dr W. R. Macdonell died on May 15 at the relatively early age of 63. On his retire- 
ment from business in 1899, at the suggestion of W. H. Macaulay he joined the 
Biometric Laboratory to do research work, and his patient labour, his wise counsel 
and lovable disposition soon made him an essential part of the place. It would 
be difficult to appraise adequately the help he gave to the Biometric School in its 
early days. It was not only in material and apparatus, it was not only in resourceful 
suggestion to his fellow- workers, but it was especially in the general sense of courage 
and in the spirit of readiness to undertake the tedious because it meant profit 
to science in the future, which he diffused around him that his help was so invaluable. 
And there was need of the heartening which Macdonell gave ! The first greeting 
that Fawcett's paper on the Naqada crania, involving years of work, received from 
anthropologist and anatomist was anything but favourable, but Macdonell per- 
sisted on the lines thus laid down in his great memoirs on the 17th century English 
crania, and it would have gladdened him to have seen Fawcett's memoir now 
described by a distinguished anthropologist as Fawcett's "classical memoir," 
and the anatomical author of the most recent British cranial research stating that 
he "cannot do better than follow the scheme adopted by Fawcett in her study of 
the Naqada crania and also by Macdonell in his study of the Whitechapel English 
crania and other series of English skulls." It takes a long while to reform any 
branch of science, but when the history of craniometry comes to be written, those 
early workers in the Biometric Laboratory will be remembered, and not the least 
Macdonell, who gave heart to them all. 
When Biometrika was founded Macdonell joined the little group of men who 
provided the guarantee fund — there is small harm now in mentioning their names : 
Francis Galton, W. F. R. Weldon, W. R. Macdonell, Lord Parker of Waddington, 
and the present Editor — and the aid then provided carried this Journal through 
the troublous days of infancy to the completely self-supporting stage which 
preceded the war. It is a sad element in the fate of this Journal that it has to 
meet a new crisis in its existence Avith many new friends it is true, but without the 
majority of the old supporters. From the first issue until this very year, Macdonell 
acted as assistant editor of Biometrika, and his name appeared on the title page 
as such for several years after the death of Weldon. Our readers were, however, 
very little conscious of all the labour Macdonell put into proof-reading and many 
Biometrika xj 19 
JUL 2. . 
