of the international commission of liquidation, which was to formulate a scheme for the regular payment of the Egyptian coupon. After much division of opinion about the shares of the revenue to be allotted respectively to the bondholders and to the Egyptian administration, the commission made recommendations which the khedive accepted in July; but it never reported formally for fear of exposing its lack of accord; and the general effect of its activities was to starve the Egyptian administration and to embitter national feeling.
Wilson then left for London and was rewarded with a K.C.M.G. Except that he continued till 1896 to serve on the council of the Suez Canal (to which he did good service by negotiating, in 1884, the addition of seven representatives of British mercantile interests) he passed for good from Egypt. He had occupied a conspicuous position there, and proved himself a master of the technicalities of finance; but Lord Cromer, who worked under and with him, has qualified his warm appreciation of Wilson's ability and quickness of intelligence with words implying that he lacked political sense, and adaptability to conditions different from those with which the normal Treasury official has to deal. He had regarded Egypt from the single point of view of international finance; and, since that aspect was to become ever less important in the years to come, he left little mark on the country and cannot be called one of its makers.
After representing Great Britain at the Brussels monetary conference in 1892, he resigned his comptroller-generalship in 1894, and two years later also his seat on the Suez Canal council. His first wife, Caroline, daughter of Mr. R. Cook, whom he married in 1860, had died in 1888, and he married secondly, in 1895, the Hon. Beatrice Mostyn, sister of the seventh Baron Vaux, of Harrowden. He had no children by either marriage.
Wilson now put his expert knowledge at the service of industrial finance, becoming in 1895 president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and subsequently accepting office on the boards of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, the Rand Control electric works, and the Alliance assurance company. Failing health led in 1909 to his retirement from active service on these boards and from the chair of the Grand Trunk Railway. His tenure of the last had been marked by important developments of the system, notably by the construction of the great Victoria tubular bridge at Montreal, and the replacement of the Niagara suspension bridge by a single span double track. Wilson had to conduct the negotiations with the Canadian government which resulted in the formation of the Grand Trunk Pacific Company in 1903 and the construction of the western part of the transcontinental line to a Pacific terminus at Prince Rupert. He lived in his later years in Berkeley Square and had a country place at Chertsey; and it was at the former that he died 9 February 1916, being within a few days of completing his eighty-fifth year.
[Personal knowledge.]
WILSON, EDWARD ADRIAN (1872–1912), naturalist and Antarctic explorer, was born at Cheltenham 23 July 1872, the second son and fifth child of Edward Thomas Wilson, M.B., consulting physician to the Cheltenham General Hospital, by his wife, Mary Agnes, daughter of Bernhard Whishaw, of Hadleigh, Suffolk. After his early education at Cheltenham College he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1891. He was chiefly interested in zoology, which he read for the natural science tripos, taking his B.A. degree in 1894. Later he went to St. George's Hospital, London, to study medicine. During his residence in London his wide human sympathies found outlet in strenuous work at the Caius College mission in Battersea. A breakdown in health compelled him to go abroad for some time, but after making a complete recovery he returned to his medical studies and qualified M.B., B.C. (Cambridge) in 1900.
In the same year Wilson applied for a post on the National Antarctic expedition under Commander Robert Falcon Scott, R.N. [q.v.], and was appointed junior surgeon with special work in vertebrate zoology. The Discovery left England in August 1901 and spent over two years in the Ross Sea, being frozen into McMurdo Sound from February 1902 to February 1904. Owing to the customary good health on modern polar expeditions Wilson's medical duties were light, and he was able to devote his time to zoological research and to the preparation of many striking paintings of Antarctic scenery. His researches into the habits and breeding of Emperor penguins were of special importance. In the summer of 1901–1902 Wilson took part with Commander R. F. Scott and (Sir) Ernest Henry Shackleton in the southward sledge journey over the ice barrier to lat. 82° 16′ 33″ S. Cape Wilson, on the edge of the plateau, marks the highest
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