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MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
Westminster, if he knew who was its author. He replied, "Myself." I t is to be regretted that no good biography exists, of W. Spottiswoode. Many notices were published at his death, and it gratified me to learn that one which I wrote for the Royal Geographical Society on one aspect of his manysided character greatly pleased his family and some of his intimate friends.
The main features of his life were that he was the son of the then Queen's Printer, of good Scottish family, and the presumed heir to a considerable fortune. He went to Oxford, where he obtained the University Scholarship in mathematics, and where also intelligence reached him of the entire collapse of his father's fortune through unwise speculation. He braced himself to the occasion, and, after many years of hard work, himself succeeding his father as Queen's Printer, he created a model business on the largest scale, and rehabilitated the lost fortune. I n the meantime he had sufficient spare energy to occupy himself day by day with congenial pursuits in literature and science. Among other diversions he loved to travel considerable distances during the few weeks he annually allowed himself for vacation, and to acquire much knowledge of other countries in that way. Enormously worked as he was, he always seemed to have leisure, and he did with thoroughness whatever he undertook.
At this time there was still much ignorance concerning the northern part of the peninsula of Sinai, especially of the plain of El Tih, and he suggested to me that by making judicious preparations its survey might be accomplished within the short space of time
