THE Institution has to deplore a very great loss in the death of Miss JANE HAY, the Honorary Secretary of the St. Abbs Station, which took place on the 26th January last. Miss Hay was a remarkable personality, who united a strong love of her fellow-men and an indefatigable activity in doing good with gifts of organization and a practical capacity for business which would have been noteworthy in the head of a great industrial concern.

It is quite impossible, within the narrow limits of these columns, to refer, even briefly, to the manifold activities which filled the life of this truly noble woman; but her life was, in many respects, so remarkable that we cannot refrain from noting a few of its salient features, for many of which we are indebted to the Berwickshire Neios.

Educated at one of the colleges connected with London University, she served on the Edinburgh School Board and was one of the founders of the Scottish Armenian Society, taking a prominent part in the organization of the great meetings of protest against the Armenian massacres. She threw herself into the relief work after the Graco-Turkish War, and was instrumental, later on, in establishing a relief centre, in Kazan, one of the famine-stricken centres of Russia, in 1899. She was Vice-Chairman of the Berwickshire Insurance Committee, and a member of the Executive of the i East Coast Fishermen's Association.

Last, but certainly not least, she was one of the very few lady Honorary Secretaries of a Life-boat Station Branch in I Great Britain. Her keen interest in seamen and the sea led her to devote herself with unsparing energy to the • efficient organization and administration of the important Life-boat station at St. Abbs, where her strong and vigorous personality, coupled with a charming frankness and breeziness of outlook, won her the respect and affection of all with whom she was brought in contact. Not satisfied with activities such as we have described, she founded a school for diving at St. Abbs, and she had the satisfaction of seeing her work in this direction recognized by the Berwickshire Secondary Education Committee, which granted certificates to those pupils who satisfactorily completed the course; and last year Admiral of the Fleet Sir Gerard Noel, a member of the Committee of Management, presented the prizes to the most successful lads. It may be recalled that it was Miss Hay who convened a public meeting at St. Abbs in order to petition the Institution for a Life-boat at St. Abbs, a practical outcome of the deep sympathy which had been evoked at that little port by the disaster which befell the S.S. Alfred Erlandsen on the 17th October, 1907, with the loss of eighteen lives.

When the Life-boat Station was founded, she took a step which was typical alike of her sound common sense and of the generosity of her interest in the Life-boat cause. She insured her life for £200, with the proviso that the Institution should receive the insurance money. The Committee of Management have decided to mark their deep appreciation of Miss Hay's services, and to commemorate her fruitful and beneficent activity in the foundation and management of the St. Abbs Station, by devoting this sum to the ! Life-boat shelter which is now in course of construction at St. Abbs, where her memory will long be held in affectionate remembrance.