Abstract
COL. WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY COLE VERNER, who died on January 25 at his home at Algeciras, was in many ways a remarkable man. He was a product of the Army at its best and a living denial of the too-often-quoted saying that Army officers think little and have no interests beyond sport and their “shop.” Col. Verner will be remembered not only as the writer of the history of the Rifle Brigade and as the inventor of the luminous magnetic and prismatic compass and of other aids for military sketching and surveying, but also as an authority on the wild birds of South Spain and the discoverer of many of the rock shelters in South-West Spain that had been painted and decorated by Neolithic or Eneolithic man. Articles on the latter were published by him in the Saturday Review, and these brought him into relationship with the Abbé H: Breuil. The result was a careful survey of the whole district with regard to prehistoric man. Col. Verner, while bird-hunting near Ronda, had once noticed paintings on the walls of a cave near the top of the “sierra.” This led to the publication by Breuil, Obermaier, and Verner of the first of an interesting group of Palaeolithic cave paintings, which recall the northern group of France and Cantabria. But the memory of Coh Verner will always live in the hearts of those who were privileged to be with him for a time at his little shooting cottage near the Laguna de la Janda. His kindness, knowledge, and interest in everything were especially noticeable, but at the same time his soldierlike love of order was never absent. Woe betide the guest who returned the salt-jar to the place where the pepper-pot should have been ! The Army has lost a competent officer who continued to work for it in many ways after being physically incapacitated during the South African War from active service; science has lost an earnest follower; but, above all, some of us have lost a real friend.
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BURKITT, M. Col. Willoughby Verner. Nature 109, 213–214 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109213b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109213b0