McNair was a favourite with both sexes. By the men he was adored on the cricket-field, where his bowling was most effective, while the girls, who always possess second sight in the way of detecting a good fellow when they see him, loved him _en masse_. It may be some consolation to the widowed mother now robbed of her darling boy, to know that there are heavy hearts in other homes besides her own--the purest tribute that can be laid on the grave of one who was a good son as well as a gallant explorer. We note that the fever of which he died was contracted at Quetta. _Extract from_ "The Pioneer," _August 20th,_ 1889. THE LATE MR. McNAIR.--The lives of some men are so intimately connected with certain phases in the general development of knowledge that their biographies afford short but useful pages in the history of progress which may well be read in connection with more stirring national records. Thus it was with the life of a man who quietly passed from the subordinate branch of the Survey Department into the land of shadows on the 13th of this month at Mussoorie. At the commencement of the year of grace 1879, a little over ten years ago, we were groping our way across the borderland which separates India from Turkistan, in unhappy ignorance of all but two or three partially illustrated lines of advance which might land us either at Kabul or Kandahar. Considering the vital importance that it always has been to India that at least a creditable knowledge of the countries separating her from Russia should exist, the geographical mist which enveloped the highlands of Afghanistan and the deserts of Baluchistan in 1879 was certainly remarkable. It is true that the war of 1839-43 had brought to the front one or two notable geographers, amongst whom North, Broadfoot, and Durand were conspicuous, but it had also developed a host of inferior artists, whose hazy outlines and indefinite sketches tended most seriously to obscure the really trustworthy work of better men. More, a good deal, was known about Kandahar and Kabul than of our present frontier opposite Dera Ismail, or of the passes leading from Bannu across the border only a few miles distant. Indeed, so far as that frontier was concerned, from Peshawar to Sind, no military knowledge of it existed whatever. It is with the gradual evolution of light over these dark places that McNair's name is so closely associated. For many years previous to the Afghan war he had been making himself thoroughly acquainted with modern survey instruments of precision, which are to the scientific weapons of our forefathers of fifty years ago what the Gatling and Henry-Martini are to the old Brown Bess. He was one of the first to grasp the true principles of using the plane-table when rapid action is necessary, and right well he turned his knowledge to account. It was the advance on Kabul in 1879 that first introduced him to the notice of military authorities, and in the course of that year's