mittee of the colony. Capt. Heath took an active interest in Church matters, and was for many years a member of the Diocesan Council and Chairman of Committees of Synod. These offices, together with those of Portmaster of the colony, Chairman of the Marine Board, and member of the Defence Committee, he resigned in Jane 1890, when he accepted a pension under the Civil Service Act, his health necessitating rest and change. On commencing his duties in 1860, shortly after the separation of the colony, there was one lighthouse and one lightship in existence, those being in Moreton Bay. On giving up charge in 1890, the coast was lighted by thirty-five lighthouses, six lightships, and some one hundred and sixty smaller lights; eighteen ports were open with a thousand miles of buoyed and beaconed channels, including the intricate navigation of the passage through the coral waters of the inner route. On his leaving Queensland, he received a presentation of plate as an evidence of the esteem and regard of the officers and men of the department over which he had presided, and also the thanks of the Government for his long and valuable services and for the admirable manner in which the pilot and lighthouse services of the colony had been organised and controlled by him.
Heaton, John Henniker, M.P., was born at Rochester, Kent, on May 18th, 1848, and educated at Kent House Grammar School and at King's College, London. At sixteen years of age he emigrated to Australia, where he engaged in pastoral pursuits, acquiring " colonial experience," and afterwards became connected with the press. He returned to England in 1884. He was one of the Commissioners for New South Wales to the Amsterdam Exhibition in that year, and in 1885 represented Tasmania at the Berlin International Telegraphic Conference, where he was largely instrumental in securing a reduction in the cable charges between England and Australia. He also interested himself in obtaining a modicum of representative government for the colony of Mauritius, which he had visited en route from Australia to England. At the general election in Nov. 1885 Mr. Heaton was returned to the House of Commons for the city of Canterbury in the Conservative interest, and in the following year was re-elected unopposed. During his Parliamentary career he has made himself prominent by his persistent attempts to reduce the cost of postal and cable communication between England and the colonies, India, and America. Mainly as the result of his exertions and the powerful assistance afforded to him by the publicity given to his contentions in the Times newspaper, the reduction of the Anglo-Colonial postage to twopence-halfpenny was brought into effect in Jan. 1891. Mr. Heaton is now intent upon the inauguration of an universal penny postal rate of intercommunication between all parts of the empire and America. Recently, in conjunction with an Australian and an English capitalist, he offered to guarantee the Imperial Government against the annual loss (estimated by Mr. Goschen at £75,000) which such an extension of the penny post might presumably occasion. The offer was, however, declined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the change is now brought within measurable distance of achievement, mainly owing to Mr. Heaton's indefatigable efforts. Mr. Heaton is the author of a valuable work of reference entitled "The Australian Dictionary of Biography and Men of the Time," published in 1880. Though now somewhat out of date, it must largely form the basis of all subsequent works of a similar kind. Mr. Heaton has also written one or two other brochures of a minor character. In 1873 he married Rose, only daughter of S. Bennett, of Mundarrah Towers, N.S.W.
Hector, Sir James, K.C.M.G., M.D., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., F.L.S., F.G.S., etc., son of the late Alexander Hector, Writer to the Signet, of Edinburgh, was born in Edinburgh March 16th, 1834, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and at the University, which he entered in 1852, taking the degree of M.D. in 1856. While here he served as assistant under Professor Edward Forbes and other eminent men of science. For a short time after taking his degree, Dr. Hector acted as assistant also to Sir James Simpson; but in March 1857 he was selected by Sir Roderick Murchison, Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, to accompany the Palliser expedition to the Rocky Mountains, as surgeon and
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