DEATH OF MR JOHN WESTON BROWN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8454, 3 June 1907, Page 7

DEATH OF MR JOHN WESTON BROWN.

(From Our London Correspondent)

LONDON, April 13,

Mr John Weston Brown passed

away in. the Macclesfield Union Hospital—where he was taken some five months ago, not as a pauper,

but mainly for convenience, owing to his serious illness. He was born in Staffordshire on June 21st, 1811. He . sailed to Australia in 1825. He was a great naturalist, and collected a large number of various species of birds for Messrs Jamrachs, of London, and during his time abroad had many narrow escapes. On one occasion the deceased was bitten by a poisonous snake, which was four feet long, on the first finger of the left hand. The rule in "the bush," which he knew prefectly well, was to • always use a stick when trying to find anything, and not the bare hand. On this particular occasion deceased made a great mistake, with the result that he was badly bitten by the venomous reptile. Knowing the paction he was in, and being twenty nfrtes away from any civilised community, he at once cut away the • flesh from his finger with his penknife, and also killed the reptile, which is at the present time in the possession of one of deceased's friends in Macclesfield. Later on he came across a number of natives who dressed his finger for him in their own peculiar way, and it was practically all right up to the day of his death, except' for stiffness in the first joint. On another occasion he , was compelled to fight against the New Zealand natives, when he got wounded in the right knee, which , quickly healed up, but which, in later years, in cold weather, often troubled him when walking. He often related that when he was in Hobart town, he has seen workmen leave their tools in the strejt while "they went to their dinner, and the convicts, who had beeif transported to ijhe colony, riever even touched them, oiLflttempted to steal them.