spoke of him in the highest terms. In the Terra Nova he was invaluable, and Captain Scott saw in the young officer a most efficient comrade and a most unselfish and merry messmate, of whom he writes to his mother:

'Your son is just splendid, no praise from me could do him justice. He has taken to sledge-work like a duck to water, and is counted amongst the hardest and best of our travellers. But in addition to a fine physique and splendid constitution he has excellent mental capacity and this has been of the greatest possible use to me. I have learnt to place the greatest reliance in all that he does, and as a consequence, my own work has been made a great deal easier and lighter. Added to unfailing energy he has a great deal of tact and discretion and he is immensely popular with everyone. I owe him a great debt of gratitude and hope to help him forward when our present work is accomplished. He has such a happy knack of coming through difficulties with a smiling face.'

All went happily on the voyage. Dr. Wilson wrote of Teddy Evans:

'A mad schoolboy sometimes, always very thoughtful for other people. He is as full of life and energy as ever, and every one agrees that he manages the ship with perfect seamanship. As captain no less than as a messmate he is simply splendid, the very soul of good spirits, and bursting with life and energy. He keeps every one in the mess as cheerful as he is himself.'

Evans and young Bowers saved the ship, in the furious gale of December 1-3, by scrambling through a hole in the steel bulkhead and reaching the pump suctions.

Such were the fine spirits which Captain Scott got around him, all actuated by zeal for the cause and devotion to their beloved leader. A hut was set up in the best position for the geological work, depots were laid out under circumstances of extreme difficulty and danger, and a very happy winter was passed by our explorershard-working, accomplished, unselfish men, and good comrades. The journey of Dr. Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry Garrard, in the depth of winter, was considered by Captain Scott as one of the most gallant stories in Polar history.

'That men should wander forth in the depth of a polar night, to face the most dismal cold and fiercest gales in darkness, is

something new; that they should have persisted in spite of every adversity for full five weeks is heroic. It makes a tale for one generation which I trust will not be lost in the telling.'

Thus Scott wrote of the dear friends, with whom he died, in well-merited praise.

It is not here that the story of the grandest Polar journey on record can be told in detail. We know that all the arrangements were perfect. We know that every precaution that human foresight could devise was taken, guided by the close attention, long experience, and rare ability of the greatest of Antarctic explorers. There was only one danger which no human foresight could provide against, and that danger fell upon them. It was an unavoidable risk. We took risks-we knew we took them,' were among the last words of the dying hero.

Captain Scott and his gallant comrades planted the Union Jack on the South Pole. They did this deed of derring-do, without the aid of dogs to be slaughtered afterwards, but by their own unaided efforts. They did much more; for their diligent search for and discovery of fossiliferous rocks will disclose the history of the Victorian Mountains, one of the most important discoveries connected with the Antarctic problem.

Scott died as he had lived, a brave and honourable gentleman, whose glorious deeds and heroic death will live for ever in his country's annals, unselfish, thinking of others to the very last, full of faith, undated, with his dead friends unbeside him, a true and spotless knight. Contemplating his beautiful life and heroic death, the words addressed to another such hero seem to fill the air:

'Joy may you have and everlasting fame,

Of late most hard achievement by you done,
For which enrolled is your glorious name
In heavenly registers above the sun,

Where you, a saint, with saints your place have won.'

CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM.

II. EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON.

BY A. E. SHIPLEY, F.R.S., MASTER OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

A COMBINATION of the artist and the man of science is rare, but it is not so rare as one is apt to think, and when it does occur it is often found in men of noble character and of high purpose. Such a man was Edward Adrian Wilson, who perished so tragically with his heroic companions last March in the Antarctic.

Wilson was born on July 23, 1872, at Cheltenham, where his father, now retired from practice, was for many years a leading physician. If, as is but natural, we try to trace back to their origin the two sides of Wilson's intellectual outfit which are the most outstanding-his love of natural science and his skill in art— we shall find that his paternal grandfather was a well-known ornithologist and was especially a collector and student of hummingbirds. Many of his specimens were unique and were lent to Gould for his monograph on this group, and, as so often happens, these birds were not returned, but became, probably inadvertently, incorporated with Gould's Collections, now in the British Museum. A great-uncle, brother of him just mentioned, Dr. Thomas B. Wilson, was also a recognised authority upon birds, and is well remembered for his gift to the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia of the magnificent collection of bird-skins made by the Prince de Canino, and purchased by the doctor in Paris.

His artistic bent may have been derived from his father's mother's family, for they all excelled with brush and pencil, or from his own mother, who is first cousin to the well-known Royal Academician, William Yeames. Wilson began to practise drawing at a tender age. As a boy of six he would lie on the floor drawing anything that came to hand, or at times inventing designs out of his head.

Like his uncle, Sir Charles Wilson, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., the Royal Engineer so well known in connexion with Palestine exploration and his endeavour to save Gordon at Khartoum, Wilson was educated at Cheltenham College. He entered in September 1886, being placed in the IV form. When he left, in July 1891, he was in the VI form, not the classical VI, but the 'special' VI. At school he continued his love of sketching and of observing VOL. XXXIV. NO. 202, N.S. 30

animal life. The 'Records of the Boys' Natural History Society' contain page after page of his careful and accurate observations. He was a great collector of birds' eggs, and his father recalls how often he used to come home with a clutch of eggs or a grass-snake concealed about his person. On one occasion some peewit eggs hatched out in his pockets, and the boy took the young birds straight back to their nest. He acted as Secretary to the Ornithological Section of the School Natural History Society. He not only knew the birds themselves, but he accurately knew their various notes, their methods of perching and their modes of flight. Those who recollect him as a schoolboy recall his singular power of communicating his enthusiasm to others, and the interest and charm which his wide knowledge and intense love of nature gave to his companionship in the field or the forest.

Wilson had gained an Exhibition at Caius College in 1891. He came up' in October of that year and began to read for the Natural Science Tripos, and the Medical Examinations. I cannot at this time clearly recall him, and yet I have a dim recollection of one whose wonderful drawings in the Biological and Zoological practical classes could not fail to impress the most hardened of demonstrators. Fortunately Dr. Pennington, Dr. Fraser, Bishop Knight, and Mr. H. C. Scott, who all remember Wilson as a student, have been kind enough to help me here.

I gather Wilson as a student was of a somewhat retiring temperament, as indeed he was throughout life. He certainly never put himself forward or made the slightest bid for popularity. He had his circle of close friends, every one of whom was deeply influenced for good by his presence among them, but it was not a wide circle. What is more remarkable is that this influence for better things spread far beyond his immediate associates. He was a rowing man, and in 1894 rowed No. 3 in the College boat, but he was not a conspicuous athlete. At the time the Caius College Shakespeare Society was passing through a phase which all such societies pass through at one period or another of their existence; it was then extremely exclusive, and what may surprise those unaccustomed to undergraduate life is that its exclusiveness did not take the line of confining itself to the more profound students of the Elizabethan Drama in residence, but of closing its doors to all but the leading athletic lights of the time.

It speaks volumes for Wilson's popularity and influence in the College that he was elected into this very select Society. He also took an active part in the other literary and in the scientific clubs

of the College. His serenity, his self-restraint, his absence of what eighteenth-century folk called enthusiasm,' yet his obvious uprightness, his unselfishness, and his entire lack of self-seeking commanded the deep respect of all and the lasting affection of his closer friends. He had always a very pleasant smile and a very expressive face, which could, by a swift change of look, let it be known whether he approved or disapproved of a word or an act, and this without uttering a syllable. He never obtruded himself, but he never could be overlooked.

In 1894 Wilson took his B.A. degree, having gained a First Class in Part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos. He remained in residence another three terms, reading for the second M.B. examination. In 1896 he joined St. George's Hospital, and took up his residence at the Caius College Mission House, Battersea. The poorer parts of Battersea were then horribly overcrowded, for the replacing of the slum regions around Sloane Street by middleclass flats had driven the poorer inhabitants across the river. He not only gave all his spare time, but all his spare money, to the Mission. Still he never neglected his work, though he noticeably preferred clinical work in the wards and study in the museum to listening to lectures. He was in all things thorough, and, in spite of interruption due to ill-bealth, he passed his Cambridge examinations without undue mental strain, taking his M.B. in 1900. Whilst at St. George's, Wilson took a full share in the common life of the students. He rowed bow in the hospital four in the Inter-hospital Rowing Cup Competition, and his contributions to the St. George's Graphic Society's Annual Exhibition were very highly valued.

Wilson was of light build, the most abstemious of men, one who ever kept his body in subjection; yet working double tides was, in time, too much for him, and in 1898 he had more than a threatening of tuberculosis. He spent part of this year at Davos, and the two following summers in Norway as the guest of his friend Mr. Rice. Here he slept and lived in the open air, and made many bird-studies; especially he studied the hawks and the owls-birds that always aroused his interests and commanded his sympathies.

By 1900 he had recovered his health, and after qualifying,' he competed for an appointment on the resident staff of St. George's. He was successful, but it was a two years' appointment, and those in authority, dreading a relapse, advised him not to take it up. Of course this was a bitter disappointment, and equally of course he bore it with his usual serenity.