A few days ago the "Argus" contained the announcement of the death of the Rev. Edward Tanner on the first day of this year, at his property at Woongarra Grange, in Queensland.

Many Victorians will have recognised the name of one of the earlier, though not the earliest, groups of the clergy of their own country. Mr. Tanner was one of the band that came to Port Phillip in the "Stag" in 1847, fellow passenger with Bishop Charles Perry, Dean Hussey Burgh Macartney, Archdeacon Francis Hales, Canon Henry Hewett Paulet Handfield, who are still living and working; and Rev. Daniel Newham and Rev. Willoughby Bean, who rest from their labours.

Mr. Tanner came to Port Phillip in the capacity of catechist in the service of what was then known as the 'Colonial Church and School Society.' In this service he laboured in what a newspaper of that day once called 'the purloins' of Newtown and Collingwood, and he was one of the first to sow the seed of Church life at what is now Coburg, but was then more popularly known as the Merri Creek.

Mr. Tanner was ordained deacon by Bishop Perry in St. James' Cathedral on Trinity Sunday, 1849, and priest on St. Thomas' Day, 1851. He continued to work at the Merri Creek for at least a year after his ordination. Subsequently he was transferred to the Barwon, where is now the town of Winchelsea. Here he laid the foundations of parochial life. It was during his incumbency that the parsonage and church were both built. Services were also carried on by him in many of the stations round about.

After several years of work at Winchelsea, Mr. Tanner was seized with a feeling that many good men experience, a sort of gadfly of change. He could no longer rest where the lines had fallen to him, so he departed first to Camden Harbour, and on the failure of that expedition he directed his steps to Queensland, in those days known as Moreton Bay. "Here he was minister of Wide Bay; subsequently he went to Mackay, and, after years of absence, returned to Maryborough as rector of St. Paul's. It is some thirteen years since" (says the "Bundaberg and Mount Perry Mail") "that Mr. Tanner retired from active clerical duty, and selected for himself one of the finest sites in the then almost impenetrable jungle of Woongarra."

Mr. Tanner's health began to fail him; and though he visited Europe in the early part of 1886 to consult the physicians, yet he was not able to receive any benefit from their advice, and he returned to his property in Queensland, where he died in the first of this year. Mr. Tanner was never married, but he leaves a sister, to whom he was tenderly attached, to mourn his death.

Mr. Tanner was a very warm friend, impulsive, perhaps, and sensitive, but generous and very tender-hearted. Not many of his old fellow-workers in Victoria are left to speak of his memory; but one at least recalls the days that are gone by, the days of strange straitnesses and amusing shifts in household economies, the days of happy concert and unfailing confidence in more serious matters of duty.

Although Mr. Tanner gave up active ministerial duty in the latter part of his life, it is not to be understood that he abandoned the Church of his ordination vows. He was always ready to help a brother clergyman, and we believe helped to maintain the ordinances of the Church on his property and in his neighbourhood.

- Henry Hewett Paulet Handfield