SELBORNIAN A. 
Conversazione and Annual Meeting. — We print in this 
number Lord Avebury’s Presidential Address ; but owing to 
the late period in the month at which our Conversazione and 
Annual Meeting took place, we are compelled to defer our full 
report of these two events. 
Death of Mrs. Brightwen. — Never was the Sel- 
bornian ideal more thoroughly realised than by our 
valued Vice-President, Mrs. Brightwen, whose death 
we now have to deplore. Eliza Elder was born at 
Banff, October 30, 1830; and, her parents having died 
in her infancy, she was brought up by her uncle, Alex- 
ander Elder, one of the founders of the publishing firm 
of Messrs. Smith and Elder, at Streatham. In 1855 
she married George Brightwen, a stockbroker, who 
died in 1883, leaving her a life interest in the small but 
beautiful estate of The Grove, Stanmore, partly in 
Middlesex and partly in Hertfordshire. Here she de- 
voted herself to her garden and her many and varied 
animal pets, which she studied with minute attention 
and a catholic interest and not merely with humanity 
and wonder. Not till 1890, when she was sixty years 
of age, did Mrs. Brightwen publish her first book, 
“ Wild Nature won by Kindness,” of which upwards 
of twenty thousand copies have been sold ; but a paper 
by her on “Feeding Birds in Winter” appeared in The 
Sclborne Magazine for February, 1889. She had been a 
Vice-President of our Society since 1890, and was also a 
Fellow of the Entomological and Zoological Societies; 
and, in addition to much active philanthropic work, in 
spite of constant ill-health, she has, since the publica- 
tion of her first volume, carried out and recorded a 
long series of observations on animals and plants of all 
kinds, which have formed the subjects of a series of 
delightful books. “ Inmates of my House and Garden ” 
appeared in 1895, “Glimpses of Plant Life” in 1897, 
“ Rambles with Nature Students ” in 1899, and “ Quiet 
Hours with Nature” in 1904. A skilful draughts- 
woman, she frequently exhibited her own studies of 
feathers, plants, &c., together ^with the many natural 
curiosities she had collected, at our Conversazione, 
and, when her health permitted, was herself a regular 
attendant. As a writer she has done much — very much 
— to inculcate the principles upon which our Society is 
based, principles which may be, in the main, summa- 
rised as the loving study of Nature. Mrs. Brightwen 
died at The Grove on May 5, and was buried at Stan- 
more on the 9th. 
