Obituary.

On 18th January, Mr Bancroft, historian of the United States, aged 90.

Mr John White, an old settler, and author of certain works on the traditions and customs of the Maoris, died suddenly in Auckland on the 13th instant, aged 65.

Home papers just to hand record the death in December of Dr Alexander Ellis, well known as a man of profound learning and piety, a skilled philologist, and an ardent advocate of spelling-reform.

Mr W. J. Potts, proprietor of the Inangahua Times, Reefton, died on the 23rd January in Wellington, aged 44. He had been in failing health for some time past, his illness consisting of some brain-trouble, on account of which he sought medical advice in Melbourne. On his way home he was fatally stricken. He leaves a widow and family.

A London telegram of the 4th January records the death of Alexander William Kinglake, the historian of the Crimean war, at the age of 79. The first volume of his great work appeared in 1863, and the remaining five volumes during the fifteen or sixteen years following. It is one of the monumental works of the age, and brought its author both fame and fortune. His unflattering portrait of Napoleon III in the first volume caused considerable comment, and gave rise to much indignation at the Court of the Tuileries, the sale of the book being prohibited in France during the Empire. Mr Kinglake practised at the bar from 1837 to 1856, and in 1857 was elected for Bridge-water in the Liberal interest.

Mr E. Tucker, Stratford, sends us the following: Died, lately, Mr James Evan Adlard, printer, Bartholomew Close, London. He succeeded his father and uncle in that old-established business which was founded by the father of these gentlemen, who published a printers' grammar, and who was the printer of the old « Encyclopædia Londinensis. » The office was in good repute for the production of medical, mathematical and school works. Mr James Evan Adlard was Master of the Stationers' Company at the time of his death. He is succeeded in that position by Mr Joseph Greenhill, whose family have been connected with the Company for several generations, his grandfather having served as master in 1787.

Simonides, the notorious Greek manuscript forger, has just died in a little town in Albania. Among his exploits was the presentation to a committee of scholars at Athens of a manuscript of Homer written on lotus leaves, which he asserted belonged to a date anterior to the Christian era. Eleven of the twelve members of the committee were convinced of the authenticity of the document, but the twelfth discovered that it was a faithful copy of the text of Homer as published by the German critic Wolff, and that the manuscript reproduced the whole of the printers' errors in this edition. M. Simonides, who succeeding in swindling Ismail Pasha out of a large sum of money for a forged manuscript of Aristotle, subsequently sold to the British Museum a false memorandum addressed by General Belisarius to the Emperor Justinian, and likewise induced the Duke of Sutherland to purchase two apocryphal letters from Alcibiades to Pericles. Several of the greatest scholars of Europe have been deceived by his forgeries.