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OBITUAEY.

[Not.

Jolliffe, second baron. Educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford ; joined 4th Light Dragoons, 1849 ; served in the Crimea and was in the Balaclava charge ; sat as a Conservative for Wells, 1855-68. Married, first, 1858, Lady Agnes Byng, daughter of second Earl of Strafford ; and second, 1880, Anne, daughter of H. Lambert, of Carnagh, Co. Wexford, and widow of third Earl of Dunraven. On the 80th, at Grey's Court, Henley-on-Thames, aged 68, Sir Francis George Stapleton, eighth baronet. Educated at Sandhurst; entered the Grenadier Guards, 1849 ; served in the Kaffir War, 1851. Married, 1878, Mary Catherine, daughter of Adam Steuart Gladstone. On the 31st, at Canonteign, Devon, aged 38, Viscount Exmouth, Edward Fleetwood John Pellew, fourth viscount. Edu- cated at Eton ; Lieutenant, 1st Devon Yeomanry, 1881-90. Married, 1884, Edith, daughter of Captain Hargreaves, of Arborfield Hall, Berks. On the 81st, at Arundel, aged 73, Right Rev. John Butt, D.D., Roman Catholic Bishop of Sebasto- polis (in Armenia). Educated at Stoneyhurst ; was Roman Catholic Chaplain to the British troops in the Crimea, 1853-5 ; Bishop of Southwark. On the 31st, at Plymouth, aged 75, Major-Oeneral Robert Boyle, C.B., R.M.L.A., son of James Boyle, R.N. Entered the Royal Marines, 1841 ; served in the Nicaraguan Ex- pedition, 1841, and in China War, 1856-7, with great distinction. Married, 1861, Lucy Margaret, daughter of Robert Bower, of Welham Hall, Yorks.

NOVEMBER.

Sir William Dawson, K.C.M.O., F.R.S., LL.D. — John William Dawson, the son of a Scotch emigrant, was born in 1820 at Picton, Nova Scotia, where he re- ceived his early education, and subse- quently continued his studies at Edinburgh and in London under Sir Charles Lyell. Shortly after his return to Nova Scotia, 1842, he was appointed lecturer at Dalhousie Col- lege, Halifax, and Government Super- intendent of Education for the province. In 1855, after having previously done much to introduce an improved system of education into his native country, he was appointed Principal and Pro- fessor of Natural History at M'Gill University, Montreal, which during the course of his headship, lasting nearly forty years, became one of the most important educational centres in America, not excluding those of the United States. He developed the scientific course of instruction to a remarkable extent, obtaining large sums of money from prominent Cana- dians to endow chairs and scholarships. He was also one of the founders and for several years Principal of the' M*Gill Normal School, and was the author of numerous books and papers on geological and scientific subjects, many of which had a strong theolo- gical bias, the principal being "Arcadian Geology," "Archaia," "Fossil men," 44 The Chain of Life," " Modern Science in Bible Lands," "Modern Ideas of Evolution," etc., etc. He was strongly opposed to the theories of geologians who attributed countless ages to the evolution of the world, and held that man made his appearance on earth not more than 6,000 or 8,000 years ago. Sir Wm. Dawson married, 1847, Mar-

garet, daughter of J. Mercer, of Edin- burgh, and died at Montreal on November 19, almost suddenly.

The Khalifa Abdul-lahi.— Abdul-lahi ben Said Mohammed was a member of the Taaisha branch of the Baggara tribe, inhabiting the south-western district of Dar-Fur. Abdul-lahi, the eldest of four sons of a teacher of the Koran and a dealer in charms, was born in 1844. In the struggle of the Furs against Zubeir, the Egyptian commander, in 1861-2, he fought bravely for his fellow-countrymen. He was, however, taken prisoner and sentenced to death, but on the inter- cession of the priests, he was pardoned. According to a current story Abdul-lahi soon afterwards was brought before Zubeir, to whom he declared that it had been revealed to him in a dream that Zubeir was the expected Mahdi, and that he (Abdul-lahi) was to be his follower. Tnis prophecy failed, how- ever, to convince Zubeir, and Abdul- lahi soon afterwards returned to his own country, where he apparently occupied himself with slave-hunting. His father urged him to break off his connection with this mode of life, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and never to return to Dar-Fur. In 1864 Abdul-lahi started on his journey, but hearing of the rising power of Moham- med Ahmed, he at once turned aside and formally enrolled himself as one of the future Mahdi's followers. He was soon rewarded by the post of flag- bearer, and accompanied his master in a tour through Kordofan, where the hostility of the population to the Egyptian authorities offered a pro- mising field to the leader of a revolt.