Obituary.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 49, 1916, Unnumbered Page

Obituary. Captain L. S. Jennings. Captain Lancelot S. Jennings, who was killed in action at the front on the 15th September, 1916, as born at Takaka, Nelson Province, in the year 1888. He was the second son of the Rev. Charles Jennings, sometime incumbent of Takaka Parish, and a grandnephew of the late Sir John Jennings, England. His mother was the second daughter of the late Rev. T. S. Grace, who for many years in the earlier history of New Zealand, before the Maori War, was the Church of England missionary resident at Pukawa, Lake Taupo. Captain Jennings was educated at Nelson College and Canterbury College. He distinguished himself at both places, taking his B.Sc. degree in 1910, M.Sc. in 1911, B.A. in 1912, and was the Canterbury College candidate for the Rhodes Scholarship in 1912. During that year he acted as Professor of Biology at Canterbury College while Dr. Chilton was absent on leave in Europe. After that he served for some time on the staff of the Wanganui Collegiate School, and at the time of his enlistment he was Science Master at Waitaki High School. He was a keen soldier always, and put in his full time in the Senior Cadets and Territorials. He embarked on the 14th August, 1915, with the Sixth Reinforcements as senior lieutenant in the Otago Infantry Battalion, and after the Gallipoli campaign got his captaincy in Egypt, prior to departure for the western front in France. He was a first-class cricketer, having represented both Nelson College and Canterbury College, and was one of the most brilliant lawn-tennis players in the country. He was New Zealand University champion from 1908 to 1912 (inclusive), and in the last year he and Miss B. D. M. Cross (now Mrs. Jennings) won all five championships between them. Before the end of his college course he had joined the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, of which he continued to be an active member. He took up specially the study of the New Zealand Cirripedia, a group which has been very much neglected, and had already published a paper dealing with ther species of the pedunculate Cirripedia, while his revision of the sessile forms was well advanced when he left New Zealand for the front. Thomas King. Thomas King was born in Glasgow in 1858, and was brought to Auckland in infancy by his parents. He was educated at the Auckland College and Grammar School, and afterwards by private tutors in Wellington. He joined the staff of Messrs. W. and G. Turnbull and Co., and afterwards entered the service of Messrs. Levin and Co. Mr. King was on the staff of the Colonial Observatory as transit observer under the directorship of the late Sir James Hector, and from 1887 to 1911 he was responsible for the time service. At the latter date he resigned from the Observatory.

In December, 1903, and. January, 1904, as part of the programme carried out by the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, Canada, under the charge of Dr. Otto Klotz, to determine trans-Pacific longitudes, Mr. King observed at Wellington, in conjunction with Dr. Klotz at Doubtless Bay, to ascertain the difference of longitude between these two places. Mr. King took great interest in the Wellington Philosophical Society, of which he was President at the time of his death. He was elected as a member of the Council of the Society for 1881–85; Auditor, 1891–1904; Secretary and Treasurer, 1904–9; Vice-President, 1910–14; and President, 1914–16. In 1910 he was elected an honorary life member in recognition of his services to the society. Mr. King was the author of a valuable paper, “On New Zealand Mean Time, and on the Longitude of the Colonial Observatory, Wellington; with a Note on the Universal Time Question” (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. 35, 1903, pp. 428–51). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1910, and was also a member of the Société Astronomique de France. He died on Thursday, the 16th March, 1916, at Wellington. C. E. A.