OBITUARY NOTICES. 173
THE LATE HENRY WALKER, F.G.S.
Honorary Member of the Essex Field Club.
[With Portrait, Plate V.]
In the honourable roll of those who have by their writings and example
popularised the study of geology and natural history in the field, the name of
Henry Walker will always be prominently inscribed. We of the Essex Field
Club have special reasons for cherishing his memory—he aided our earliest
efforts by the delivery of several excellent addresses, and his genial presence
as a "Conductor" and Demonstrator at Field Meetings greatly enhanced the
popularity and interest of these gatherings in the first few years of the Club's
work. Perhaps one of his happiest efforts was almost the first publication of
the Club—"A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex" served admirably to direct
the attention of amateurs to the fascinating history of the Thames Valley as
revealed by the discoveries of Sir Antonio Brady of Mammoths at Ilford, and
several graphic reports from his pen in his own newspaper (the Bayswater
Chronicle), the Leisure Hour and the City Press, made our Club widely known and
appreciated. At the close of the first year's work, Mr. Walker was
unanimously elected an Honorary Member in grateful recognition of the
services he had rendered to the infant society. In late years the pressing
claims upon his time as a journalist allowed him fewer opportunities of
attending the Saturday afternoon meetings, but he was always to the fore
with his pen and purse in any investigations or plans interesting to the Club,
and his death on February 13th, 1900, came as a great shock and grief to his
numerous friends both within and without our ranks.
As a summary of Mr. Walker's public career we cannot do better than
reprint the appreciative notice from one who knew him well, which appeared
in the Bayswater Chronicle at the time of his death :—
" It is above all things as a citizen and a believer in 'the religion of
humanity' that Mr. Walker would wish to be remembered among his neigh-
bours and friends. Citizenship was to him a part of personal religion, and he
counted among his friends the ministers of the Jewish Church, members of
the Roman Catholic communion, Anglican clergy and missioners, and Noncon-
formists of every kind. He was the friend of all sincere enthusiasms which
made for social freedom and order and for a broad and many-sided life. He
was keenly interested in modern Biblical criticism, and was a pioneer of
liberal thought in the realm of science; espousing the principle of evolution
at a time when its acceptance was regarded as heterodoxy of the most danger-
ous kind. The present writer well recalls public lectures and meetings at
which antagonism between modern science and evangelical doctrine was still
sharp and sore ; and it was on such occasions that Mr Walker would throw
himself into the breach and defend the former both from the Christain and
the human standpoint, with an earnestness which showed that he held the
new truth as passionately as he had once held the old. Sharing with his
brother (Mr. Thomas Walker, of the Daily News), the heritage of a Puritan