Obituary.

Mr George Routledge, the well-known London publisher, died on the 14th December.

Rufus Porter, the founder of the Scientific American, a most extraordinary and versatile inventive genius, died recently at New Haven, Connecticut, at the advanced age of 93.

Mr Joseph Exall, a well-known Canterbury and West Coast journalist, has died in Christchurch. Mr Exall was 70 years of age, and had been bed-ridden for the last year or two.

Alexander Gordon Middleton, printer, poet, and journalist, died on the 15th October at Lilydale, Victoria, aged 60 years, and leaving a widow and many friends to mourn his loss. Some biographical details will be found in another part of the present number.

M. Cotta, the head of probably the largest publishing house in Germany, died at Stuttgart on the 19th September. The establishment is also one of the oldest in that country, and it was the first to publish the works of Goethe and Schiller. Among its archives are numbers of letters which passed between those two great writers and the director of the business.

We have already commented on the great severity of the sentence—six months' imprisonment—inflicted on Mr John Baldwin for libel. Representations having been made to the Government that his health had given way in prison, he was released after fulfilling one-half of the term. He at once returned to his home at Gisborne, and almost immediately afterwards broke a bloodvessel. On Christmas Day, within a fortnight of his release, he died.

Professor Mainwaring Brown, who was exploring with two friends near Lake Manapouri, went « for a stroll » on Thursday the 3rd inst., and has not since been seen, though the most diligent search has been made. A sudden and severe change in the weather took place, snow falling heavily, and one theory is that he was buried in an avalanche. Mr Brown, who was Professor of English Literature and Political Economy in the Otago University, was a, young man of great ability, and was very popular.