PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 66

PERSONAL NOTES.

Yhe sudden -1-eath is announced at \ldershot, on March 8, of Brigadier-general E M b. Crabbe. chief staff officer lo General Sir John French. General Crabbe was born in 1852, tho son of the late General Eyre Crabbe, of Gle i Eyre, Hants. He entered the Grenadier Guards in 1871, and first saw active service in the Egyptian war of 1882 and tho Nile Expedition of 1884-5. During the kt© war in South Africa he first commanded the Third Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, with whom he was seriously wounded in the fight at Belmont. He afterwards commanded a mounted force, consisting of Yeomanry and colonials, with which he had an interestliig fight with Kr jnt/,inger. — Lord Spencer, the venerable statesman, who seems the most probable Premier in thj event of the Liberals carrying the elections when the dissolution does come, has had a long and distinguished career. He has been Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and among other things Groom of the Stole to tlie- late Prince Consort. He is head of a branch of the- Spencer family, of which the Duke of Marlborough is chief, beingi descended from the third Earl of Sunderland by his marriage 'with the great Duke of Marlborough-'s second daughter. The third Earl of Sunderland was the great statesman of Queen Anne's reign, who was ousted by Walpole in 1721, chiefly on account of his share in the South Sea Bubble, foi which he was generally regarded as responsible. His father, the second tarl. was considered, and probably justly, &.S the craftiest, most lapaciotis, and most unscrupulous of ail the politicians of his age. — Sir Henry Rc-coe, who is now 72, is a London man, but is chiefly identified by his work m Manchester, having been Professor of Chemistry at Owens College for nearly 30 years. He is connected with the political 1 life of Manchester, too. for he found time from his teaching and research work to contest and win a parliamentary seat in that city. He held it for 10 j-ears, only losing it at the general election of 1895, when the Marqui-. of Lome defeated him by the narro-v margin of 78 votes. Sir Henry is, needless to say, a man of pronounced Liberal opinions. Few English nien of science can boast of more degrees conferred by universities at home and abroad than Sir Henry Roscoe. At London and Heidelberg he acquired letters to put after his name in the ordinary course of ITniveisily study, but when his fame spread through the world as a practical chemist, degrees were showered upon him from outside. He can boast, for instance, of three LL.D.'s and a D.C.L.. while he has sat on many a royai commission, scientific ynd educational, and Las wen the. royal r..edal of the Royal Society, of which he has long been a member. — Th<= young Sultan of Zanzibar is ; - London on a strictly private visit. ~P approaching his majority, when he v> take in hand the reins of government. Seyyid Ali comes of a race of Eastern potentates whoso sceptre gave the law to the Persian Gulf and even in Africa. The late Commander Cam-eron, when he travelled through Africa from east to west, took with him a passport, from the then Sultan of Zanzibar, which every African chief read with a salaam and respected with alacrity. His irreat -grandfather, Said-bin Sultan, was the last of the potentates who ruled over th-e united Sultanate-s of Muscat and Zanzibar, w ith all their dependencies on the Asiatic seaboard and the African mainland. HL two soiis quarrelled over the succession, and the dispute was referred to the arbitrament of Lord Canning, who in 186 1 adopted the Solomonic device of cutting the Empire in two. When Khalid was anxious to upset tho British Protectorate, v- was resolved by the suzerain Poweithat the lieir to the throne should be the son of Sultan Hamud-bin Mohamed, then a boy 12 j'ears of age. During the intervening years this lad, who is now Sultan, was educated at Harrow.

— Lord Leconfield, who. as a societywriter phrases it, "puts the threes together," to-day is quite a wealthy peer, who owns some 110,000 acres of land — aboufc 30,000 of these in the picturesque County Clare, famed for its scenery and agrarian 'outrages — and lias a rent roll of £'90,000 a. year. His lordship's mother i=; a sister of Lord Rosol>pry, and botwrc 1 uncle and nephew there i* a certain farmK likeness. The Leconfield peerage is a creation of about 50 years ago. having been conferred on Colonel George Wyndham. of Petwoith. who did galla ir scr\ ice for Ins counlrv with the oVI 27th Foot, and was adopted a« heir by tho third and ponultin ate Earl of E:rremont. The present peer is a goo-l sportsman, a popular landlord, a genial neighbour. and a highly sueeo^ful M F.H. Ho went out to the Transvaal ancl acquired a wound and a reputation for pluck on the. field, but his name has not yet boon soon on Cupid's casually list. He doc^; not greatly care al out trn pleasures of town, thouah he cntei tains handsomely at hi> fine house in Ma^fan. He is- happiest, however, in his country liom> a< Petworth. where he alvays entertains a bi^j paity for the Good,

wood races, driving his guests daily ovcP the steep ridge of Ihe Downs to the <_uurse, vhrr' 1 a special portion ot the grand -tsEd is always respited for him. — .Sir Roben Jard nc. Bavt . who J.ied on Friday, Fcbraary 17. at th^ achanccd a>e of 80 yc-irs. was A>e yovngest son of the lato llr Davi'l Jardiry*. Muirhousch'.ari, Applegarth. Dumfriesshire, who-c brother-. \*&« one of the aiowo' 1 . of the East India and Cl ma irade." In early life he went out, to join his elder brothers in China, who were in the firm of Jardine. Matheson, and Co. His great <-'iv"rgy, imtiathe, and ro•ouroefulne&s enabled him to extend tho prosperity and cnte--pn^c=; of that firm, and build up a princely fortune for himself. Returning to Scotland along with his late biother, Mr Joseph Jard me. he pin-chased the fine residential estate of Ca^tlemilk, and at once proceeded to carry out oxtensne improvements on that properly He al-o entered tho political arena, and for 28 years he was a piominent figure in r.nl'amcnr. In 1831 he becaino the head of the great mercantile firm of .Jardine, -Uathc=on. and Co., and through the death of his brother, llr Andrew Jarchnc, he came into the possession of the extensive estates of Lanriek Castle. Perthshire, and Ccrrie. Dumfriesshire. He also purchased the estate of Wamphiay for £120.000. «o that in later year* he was one of the mo=L cdonsne land owners in the southwest of Scotland. H© wa= a very generous landlord, and during tho long and intense depression in agriculture, he invariably met his tenants in the most generous way. Ho tcok an active personal interest in agrieul. ture and stock-breeding, and his herd of Cialloway cattle at Odstlemilk ha-, long bo*n one of the very best herds in the count/ j. He also took a keen interest in sporting business, and i\on the Blue Ribbon of tho turf on more than one occasion. He is succeeded in his baronetcy aud estates by his son, Robert William Buchanan Jardine.

— Th& news of the tragic end of Mr F. O. Pickard-Cambridge at Wimbledon, on February 9, came as a sad shock to his relatives and friends, and will be received with regret by the many naturalists to whom he was known. Mr Cambridge, who was in his forty-fifth year, was educated at Sherborne School and Exeter College, Oxford. After taking his degree ho was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England, but some years later resigned on conscientious grounds, and devoted himself to zoological and artistic work, for vhich he was well equipped by his quickness of apprehension aud keen powers of observation. A constant visitor at Blox. worth Rectory, the home of his uncle, the Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, F.R.S., the veteran English arachnologist. it was doubtless his companionship and guidance which eariy determined the rephew's choice of spiders a 3 a group for special study. He soon took the foremost place as an authority upon the British species, and in 1526 entered upon the colo«al task of monographingthe spiders of Centra] America for Messrs Godman and Salvin's "Biologia Centralis Americana," work which was not completed till 1904-, ancl will stand for ever in mutt testimony of his gifts as a draughtsman and his analytical powers as a systematic zoologist. He also contributed a large number of papers, based upon materials in the British Museum, to various scientific periodicals, and especially to the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society."' of which he was a Fellov- in 1902. At the time of his death, and for somp years previously, he was engaged in compiling and editing the faunisfio lists of the Arachnida for the "Victoria History of the Counties,'" and it is a matted for regret that the news of his appointment by the Treasury to a po*t in tho British Museum to arrange and determiner the collection of Arachnida was received at that institution the day after his death. It will be well nigh impossible to find hf«r substitute. It would be a mistake, hovr-•cve-r. to suppose that Mr Cambridge wax purely a racialist. It was his early environment, and later on force of circumstance, ratiier than particular preference, that induced him to specialise on spiders. He was w<=>ll tersed in all branches of field natural history, from (he trapping and skinning of mammals and birds to the train, ing, and flying of hawks. He discovered in tho rock pools of Cornwall an unrecorded British species of goby; and his keenness a=. a sportsman ard fi&hermaji, toot him to Norway after salmon and moose, and on a il looting trip up the Amazons. He alw.ivs look a profound interest, and at one tin)© an acthe part, in socialist work, and the few who knew him well will feel that hi* . death, during- an attack of mental aberration, lias taken from amongst us a man who might have made his mark ir almost any path of life. —Fi«ld

— The Danes have perfected a process \\ which the tin can be recovered from trotinned iron used for canned meats, and other wa. c te scrap of like material. TL« process is a simple one, and is carried out practically, with financial success, in CopsjAhagen. The pots and pans are collected from the refuse heaps, and without nnr craning- thrown into vats, and submitted to a process of which the essential part consists in allowing a 2 per cent, solutim of stannic chloride to flow over these waste products. By electrolytic methods the tin is recovered from the new compound.