Notes

Abstract

W. HEPWORTH DIXON died very suddenly early on Saturday morning. He was best known to us as a brilliant writer and speaker, and but comparatively few knew how profoundly, and with what patient determination he would sift the truth, alike of even the most well attested, as of the most apparently trivial fact, before making use of it in his work. Only those within the circle of his more intimate friends were aware how well he followed and how easily he grasped the progress of scientific thought. In this circle were several with whom and about whose labours he delighted to converse, and none could listen without benefiting by the practical views his vigorous intellect suggested, the more so as they were possibly induced by quite other claims of thought. These columns have called attention to the ethnological value of his researches in America. His travels, especially those in the Far West, in the wilder parts of Russia, in the Holy Land, and in Cyprus, attended at times with personal risk, are full of suggestive interest to the scientific mind, and we may shortly to call attention to some of the salient facts connected with natural science which they contain. In his early days he studied astronomy and kindred subjects, and it almost seemed at one period of his life that his bent would have led him more deeply into these researches. That this early inclination never forsook him, even those who knew him least, may gather from his attendance at the meetings of the British, Association, his unremitting labours as chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and his presence at numerous anniversary meetings of our learned societies. His surviving son, Harold, is already known as a teacher of natural science at Oxford University.