Obituary.

Mr Thomas Purnell (« Q » of the Athenæum) died on the 17th December, aged 55.

Mr William Mack, a successful publisher, died at Bristol on the 3rd January, at the age of 61. He was the originator of the « Birthday Text Books, » and some of his publications in this line have never been excelled.

Dr Westland Marston, Ll.D., poet and dramatist, died in London on 5th January. He was born in Lincolnshire, January, 1819. Some of his plays have been very successful. His best-known poem is « The Death-ride at Balaklava. »

Late home papers record the death of Mr-Andrew Young, author of the best children's hymn in the English language—the « Happy Land. » He was born in 1807. Some particulars regarding Mr Young appeared in our last volume, p. 110.

Queensland papers report the death by drowning, during the late floods, of Mr E. Reddin, proprietor of two evening newspapers, one at Charters Towers, and the other at Townsville. Mr Beddin was a brother-in-law of Mr Joseph Ivess, and was at one time on the staff of the Ashburton Mail.

Mr Robert Galbraith, C.E., the recently-elected mayor of Tauranga, died on the 21st February, of pleurisy, at the early age of 32 years. He had been about ten years in the colony, had studied law, and been admitted to the bar. He was brother to the proprietor of the local Times, and for a time edited the paper.

Mr William Gilbert, father of Mr W. S. Gilbert, died on the 2nd January, at Salisbury, of paralysis, at an advanced age. He was the author of several novels, poems, and plays, and of a work published when he was sixty years of age, entitled « Dives and Laza-rus, » dealing with the condition of the poor. He was his son's most valued counsellor and critic.

On the 13th December, at Surbiton, Mr Robert Farran, formerly head of the publishing firm of Griffith, Farran, Okeden, and Welsh. He was born in India in 1829, received his early education in trade with W. H. Allen & Co., and was for many years with Longmans. In 1856, on the retirement of Mr Grant, he joined Mr Griffith. For two years past he had taken no active interest in business.

A London telegram of 3rd March, records the death of Sir Edward Baines, editor and proprietor of the Leeds Mercury,—a paper which in his hands has become one of the most powerful of the English provincial papers. He was in his ninetieth year, having been born in 1800. He was not only a distinguished journalist, but a writer of books on industrial subjects, and one of the prominent English liberal and freetrade politicians. He represented Leeds in Parliament from 1859 to 1874.