362 ADELAIDE AND VICINITY Mr. j. t. scherk member of the Council of the South Australian I^'ederation League. As a member of the Council of the Zoologfical and Acclimatisation Societ he. has exerted himself in no lukewarm manner to set that institution on a serviceable basis. Mr. Scherk has acted with vigor on the Parliamentary Printing Committee, also on the Commission of the Technical Elducation Board, which urged very strongly the establishment of the present School of Mines and Industries. He was accordingly appointed a mc'mber of the Council of this last-named useful institution and Chairman of the iMnance Coinmitt(;e. These positions are still retained by him, and his services to the cause of technical education have been very marked. Numerous sporting clubs and associations have attracted his patronage. He is a ]iatron of the South Australian Cricketing Association, of the Coopers' Cricket Club, President of the Avenue Cricket Club, Vice-president of the .South Adelaide Football Club, and is a patron of many kindred bodies. His philanthropical tendencies are widely recognised. He has acted as secretary of many committees formed to relieve local distress, the condition of the poor having always touched his heart as well as his pocket. In his donations and spontaneous disbursements of eleemosynary gifts, it may be truly said of him that " his right hand knoweth not what the left doeth." The course of this useful life has been potent for good, and has won general esteem. Mr. Scherk has worked hard, and Adelaide enjoys the harvest of his earnest and disinterested efforts. Mr. W. Copley, M.R BORN in the village of Highgreen, near Sheffield, England, in 1845, William Copley came to South Australia with his parents when four years old. The Burra Burra Copper Mine was entering the heyday of its fame, and there the family proceeded and remained for two years. After two years spent at the Victorian diggings they returned to South Australia, taking up their residence at York, in the West Torrens district, and the son was sent first to the Hindmarsh Public School, and afterwards to Mr. James Bath's School at North Adelaide. As a young man Mr. William Copley embarked in agricultural pursuits and farmed on the Murray Flats for about seven years, and also on the BLickrock Plains in the North, where he still resides. He was for several years one of the three PLxaminers in Practical Agriculture at the Roseworthy College, and in 1883-4 was President of the South Australian Farmers' Association. Mr. Copley began his political career in 1884, when he was elected to the House of Assembly for the District of Frome ; but at the general election in 1887 he experienced defeat. In June, 1887, however, he was returned to the Legislative Council for the Northern District. Offering himself for election in 1893, he was rejected, and continued in private life till 1896, when he was again elected to the House of Assembly, on this occasion for the District of Yorke Peninsula. He was for about twelve months Commissioner of Crown Lands in the first Playford Government. In 1890, upon a re-arrangement of portfolios, he became Minister of Agriculture and Education. For nearly two years he occupied this post, and after Sir John Downer defeated Mr. Holder, in October, 1892, he again resumed it, exchanging it for that of Chief Secretary in May, 1893. He has sat on several Royal Commissions, and was a member of the South Australian Commission in Adelaide for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886.
