Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/408

Lefroy of Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu. On the abolition of the office of inspector-general of army schools in 1860 Lefroy became secretary of the ordnance select committee, and in 1864 president of that committee, with the rank of brigadier-general. He became a regimental colonel on 9 Feb. 1865. On 8 Dec. 1868 he was appointed director-general of ordnance, with the temporary rank of major-general. While holding this post he carried through the formation of a class for artillery officers who wished to prepare themselves for special appointments, and to the 'advanced class.' as it was called — now the artillery college — the regiment owes much. While Lefroy was director-general of ordnance the so-called control department was introduced into the administration of the army. No one recognised more fully than Lefroy the necessity for a better organisation of the supply departments of the army, and no one opposed more keenly the attempt to secure it by converting the accountants and commissariat of the army into its controllers. He was unable, however, to secure the rejection of the new scheme, and early in 1870, finding his position untenable, he resigned his appointment, and on 1 April retired from the army with the honorary rank of major-general. In the previous month he had been made a C.B. For ten years Lefroy had held most important posts in connection with artillery at a time when modern ordnance and ammunition commenced to develope their vast size and power, and Lefroy's scientific attainments and untiring energy were of great value at a critical period in the history of our war material. His last service at the war office was as member of a committee presided over by Sir Frederick Chapman in 1870, to consider the proposed submarine mining defence of certain harbours of the kingdom.

In March 1871 Lefroy was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of the Bermudas. During his tenure of office he brought together from all sources the original documents relating to the early history of the colony, and published them in two bulky volumes, with maps, charts, and views. He collected the indigenous flora of the islands, introduced new cereals and vegetables, and brought a skilled gardener at his own expense from England to superintend their culture. He also resumed meteorological and magnetical observations. Everything concerning the welfare of his government, civil and military, social, literary, and scientific, interested him, and the coloured people found in him a firm friend. While at Bermuda he strongly recommended on moral and economical grounds a reduction of the length of the terms of imprisonment which courts-martial were empowered to award. On his return home in 1877 he was put into communication with Sir Henry (now Lord) Thring, who was then drafting the amended Mutiny Act, and a more lenient code was the result.

Lefroy was made a K.C.M.G. in 1877, and in 1880 was appointed governor of Tasmania. During his residence in that colony he communicated to its Royal Society a paper 'On the Magnetic Variation at Hobart, which gives the result of his observations with the 4-inch azimuth compass made' in 1881. In this paper he also discusses the question of the secular change of the magnetic variation on the southern coast of Australia.

He returned to England in 1882, and made his last contribution to magnetic science by the publication in 1888 of the diary of his Canadian magnetic survey. In this resumé of the principal work of Lefroy's life it is to be observed that the lines of equal value of magnetic intensity on Lefroy's maps differ considerably from those of Sabine in the 'Philosophical Transactions' in 1846 and 1872. The explanation is that Sabine, in following out his system of showing normal lines of equal value of the magnetic elements, left out some of Lefroy's observations which he considered open to question. Lefroy, having personal knowledge of the value of each one of his results, rejected none, and produces evidence to show that his isodynamic lines are 'locally correct.' Sabine, in fact, sought for the best mean results of a great continent, while Lefroy gave the exact results for a portion of that continent.

Lefroy resided in London for several years after his retirement from public life; but failing health led him to Cornwall, and he died at Lewarne, near Liskeard, on 11 April 1890. He was buried near his birthplace at Crondall in Hampshire. He was twice married, first in 1846 to the daughter of Sir John B. Robinson, bart., C.B.; she died in 1869; and secondly to Charlotte Anna, eldest daughter of Colonel T. Dundas of Fingask, and widow of Colonel Armine Mountain, C.B. [q. v.], who, with two sons and two daughters, survived him.

In person Lefroy was tall, with sharply cut features, very slim, alert in movement, genial in manner, cheerful in disposition, and chivalrous. His disinterested exertions to advance the wellbeing of the soldier and the soldier's family dated from the commencement of his military career, and continued to the end. His good works were unpretending and unobtrusive. He was honorary