Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/201

Rh visits to Melbourne and by an expedition into the mountains of the Omeo district to complete his observations on the rocks. The seventy-eight years of his long life sat very lightly on him; indeed so youthful was he in mind, so keen in intellect, so exuberant in energy that his friends anticipated with confidence for him yet many years of useful activity. But it was not to be. On the last day of the year, 1907, only two days after the death of his old friend Mr. Fison, he was suddenly struck down by hemorrhage of the stomach. At first the doctors held out every hope of a complete recovery, but they soon saw that the case was beyond their power and that Dr. Howitt's days were numbered. In order that he might be nearer to medical aid, they moved him from his own house at Metung to his son's house at Bairnsdale. For seventy years of an active and adventurous life Dr. Howitt had never been confined to his bed for a single day; but, when the last sickness came, no one could have been more patient and uncomplaining, and he received with steadfast courage the announcement of the doctors that they could do nothing for him. The remaining weeks of his life were passed almost constantly in the sleep of weakness and exhaustion, but with very little acute pain. His thoughts to the last were occupied with his work; his last conscious effort was to dictate from his death-bed a message to anthropologists impressing on them the importance of caution in accepting information drawn from the Australian tribes in their present state of decay. The message, after a delay caused by miscarriage in the post, was published in the Revue des Études Ethnographiques et Sociologiques for December, 1908. On March the 7th, 1908, Dr. Howitt passed away. His beloved wife, to whose memory he dedicated his great book, had died six years before him. She was a daughter of Judge Boothby of Adelaide, and left him with two sons and three daughters, one of