| Edward Hamilton Aitken |
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''Eha'' was born at Satara in the Bombay Presidency on August 16 1851 . His father was the Rev. James Aitken, missionary of the Free Church Of Scotland . His mother was a sister of the Rev. Daniel Edward , a missionary to the Jews at Breslau for some fifty years. He was educated by his father in India. His higher education was obtained at Bombay and Poona . He passed M.A. and B.A. of Bombay University first on the list, and won the Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876 he was a Latin Reader in the Deccan College at Poona. He also knew Greek and was known to be able to read the Greek Testament without the aid of a dictionary. He entered the Customs and Salt Department of the Government of Bombay in April 1876, and served in Kharaghoda (referred to as ''Dustypore'' in ''The Tribes on my Frontier''), Uran , North Kanara and Goa Frontier, Ratnagiri , and Bombay itself. In May, 1903, he was appointed Chief Collector of Customs and Salt Revenue at Karachi , and in November, 1905, was made Superintendent in charge of the District Gazetteer of Sind . He retired from the service in August 1906. He married in 1883 the daughter of the Rev. J. Chalmers Blake, and left a family of two sons and three daughters. He explored the jungles on the hills near Vihar around Bombay and wrote a book called ''The Naturalist on the Prowl''. His writing style was accurate and at the same time amusing to his readers. In response to an appeal for information on rats due to plague in Bombay , he wrote an article for '' The Times Of India '' ( July 19 1899 ), in which he threw a flood of light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian Rat as found in town and country. He wrote that ''Mus rattus'', the old English Black Rat , which is the common house rat of India outside the large seaports, ''has become, through centuries of contact with the Indian people, a domestic animal like the cat in Britain''. In 1902 he was deputed to investigate the prevalence of Malaria at the Customs stations along the frontier of Goa , and to devise means for removing the position of the Salt Peons who were affected by malaria in these places. During this expedition he discovered a new species of anopheline mosquito, which after identification by Major James, I.M.S., was named after him as '' Anopheles Aitkeni ''. During his service he took to writing the Annual Reports of the Customs Department and was frequently thanked for the same. Reviewers have commented that these reports are enlivened by his witty literary touch. In the last two years of his service he was put in charge of ''The Sind Gazetteer''. On completion of this work he retired to Edinburgh. He died after a short illness on April 25 1909 . He refused to be depressed by his lonely life. "I am only an exile," he remarks, "endeavouring to work a successful existence in Dustypore, and not to let my environment shape me as a pudding takes the shape of its mould, but to make it tributary to my own happiness." He therefore urged his readers to cultivate a hobby. He wrote
He was an indefatigable worker in the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society , which he helped to found, and many of his papers and notes are preserved for us in the pages of its excellent Journal, of which he was an original joint-editor. He was for long secretary of the Insect Section, and then president. Before his retirement he was elected one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society. He maintained an Aquarium and made Sunday-morning expeditions to the ravines at the back of Malabar Hill to search for mosquito larvae to feed its inmates. Mr. Aitken investigated the capabilities for the destruction of larvae, of a small surface-feeding fish with an ivory-white spot on the top of its head, which he had found at Vehar in the stream below the bund. It took him some time to identify these particular fishes ('' Haplochilus Lineatus '') which he called "Scooties" for their lightning rapidity of their movements. With these he stocked the ornamental fountains of Bombay to keep them from becoming breeding-grounds for mosquitoes, and they are now largely used throughout India for this very purpose. T. R. Bell , a naturalist friend, writing of him after his death said He was a good man in every sense of the word; a strongly religious man, a pleasant companion, broad minded, exceedingly tolerant of the weaknesses of others, gentle and lovable and a rare example of a man without a single enemy. ''Eha'' once wrote "He whose ear is untaught to enjoy the harmonious discord of the birds, travels alone when he might have company" and he himself kept many pets at home. Surgeon-General Bannerman, often found himself having to go on unpleasant trips to the "primeval forests of Cumballa Hill" to look for mosquito larvae to feed the fish. In appearance Eha has been described as a "long, thin, erect, bearded man...with a typically Scots face lit up with the humorous twinkle one came to know so well." A photograph taken in 1902 shows a fringe of hair encircling a baldhead, a condition which "Kemp's Equatorial Hair Douche" had not been able to prevent. His books include
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