282 
W. M. Macdonell 
a contributor has i^rofited in a way he little realised by Macdonell's assiduity 
and not infrequently by his suggestions. Scotland has preserved its knowledge 
and appreciation of grammar long after grammar has been discarded in England, 
and few abler proof-readers can be found than a Scotsman trained in Oxford, 
especially if he has graduated in science, and tempered his science with modern 
European literature as a hobby. The width of Macdonell's studies and of his 
interests was effectively demonstrated by his memoir " On the Expectation of 
Life in Ancient Rome and in the Provinces of Hispania and Lusitania and Africa." 
Few men could have been found to combine the necessary biometric with the 
still more needful literary training requisite for a study of this character, and fewer 
still would have concluded it with such words of modesty as Macdonell did. 
With his death biometry loses a sturdy champion, our subscribers and contri- 
butors more than they yet realise, and some of us a close and most trustworthy 
friend. Not least will this be recognised by the little band of pupils he formed 
around him during his occupancy of the lectureship on biometry in the University 
of Aberdeen. He acted straightly and he advised wisely both in his mercantile 
and in his scientific career. He had the reticence which flows from strength, 
and the persistency and courage of the strong who are reticent. Life seemed 
a spacious thing in his handling. What more could we have desired for him? 
We owe to the kindness of Professor W. Paton Ker the following brief notes 
on Macdonell which, emphasising the width of his interests and his genial personality, 
will enable those of our readers who only know him from his memoirs in Biometrika 
to understand better another of the early members of the Biometric School. 
1 first met Macdonell in my freshman's term at Balliol : I succeeded him in 
rooms possibly the worst in College, and he came in a few days later to ask if I 
had seen his copy of Victor Hugo's poems lying about. This I had already found 
and now restored to him ; it provided something to talk about afterwards. He 
Avas a Mathematical Scholar of Balliol and did not neglect his subject, but he 
always seemed more interested in other things, especially Greek. He had been at 
Aberdeen along with R. A. Neil of Pembroke, Cambridge, always one of his greatest 
friends ; at Balliol he found another Greek scholar, William Gunion Rutherford. 
Rutherford and he used to read Greek together for a time. Then Macdonell 
left Oxford to go into business, and for a year or two I saw nothing of him. 
But I found him in London when I went there in 1879 after taking my degree; 
Rutherford was there also, a master at St Paul's School, and we made it a regular 
thing to meet on Saturday evenings, the three of us, at Rutherford's rooms in 
Mitre Court. It was a good time while it lasted, but soon we went different ways 
— Macdonell to Lidia — and I lost sight of him and did not hear much, for several 
years. Soon after he got to Bombay he wrote to me, asking for the Journal of 
Philologij to be sent to him; he was keeping up his Greek and Latin; he was 
also amused at the manners of scholars in disputation. At Bombay he was once 
asked by the Danish merchants there to choose for himself a present which they 
wished to give him in acknowledgement of services rendered by him in connexion 
