KIRK, SIR JOHN (1832-1922), British naturalist and ad ministrator, son of the Rev. John Kirk, was born at Barry, near Arbroath, on Dec. 19, 1832 and died on Jan. 15, 1922. He was educated at Edinburgh for the medical profession, and after serv ing on the civil medical staff in the Dardanelles throughout the Crimean War, was appointed in Feb. 1858 physician and naturalist to David Livingstone's second expedition to Central Africa. He was by Livingstone's side in most of his journeyings during the next five years, and was one of the first four white men to behold Lake Nyassa (Sept. 16, 1859). He was finally invalided home on May 9, 1863. The reputation he gained during this expedition led to his appointment in Jan. 1866 as acting surgeon to the political agency at Zanzibar. In 1867 he was made vice-consul of Zanzibar, and in 1868 became assistant political agent, being raised to the rank of consul-general and agent in 1873. He retired in 1887. The twenty-one years spent by Kirk in Zanzibar cov ered the most critical period of the history of European interven tion in East Africa; and during the greater part of that time he was the ritual ruler (see ZANZIBAR). Kirk resigned his post
(July 1887), retiring from the consular service. In 1889-1890 was a plenipotentiary at the slave trade conference in Brussels, and was one of the delegates who fixed the tariff duties to be imposed in the Congo basin. In 1895 he was sent by the British government on a mission to the Niger; and on his return he was appointed a member of the Foreign Office committee for constructing the Uganda railway. As a naturalist Kirk took high rank, and many species of the flora and fauna of Central Africa were made known by him, and several bear his name, e.g., the Oto gale kirkii (a lemuroid), the Madoqua kirkii (a diminutive ante lope), the Landolphia kirkii and the Clematis kirkii.