he won the cup of the Cambridge Long Range Rifle Club against nearly all the best shots of the three kingdoms. The competition extended up to eleven hundred yards, a test of nerve, judgment, and, most of all, of eyesight, which it would seem wholly impossible for any man in his sixty-sixth year to stand successfully.
In the society amid which Captain Ross spent his youth challenges were no uncommon occurrence. He himself never appears to have been in any danger of figuring as principal. But he acted as second no less than sixteen times, and was justly proud of the fact that on every single occasion he had prevented a shot being fired. This was stated by him in his latter days in a published letter in which he emphatically condemned the system of duelling.
When well over seventy Captain Ross kept all the activity and the athletic carriage of his youth. He published in 1880 an introduction to a book on ‘Deer Stalking and Forests,’ by Alexander Macrae, forester to Lord Henry Bentinck; he had long contemplated writing a book on the subject himself.
He died at Rossie Lodge, Inverness-shire, on 6 Dec. 1886, being succeeded by his eldest son, Horatio Seftenberg John Ross.
Three of Ross's sons inherited their father's skill as marksmen. In 1860, at the first Wimbledon meeting, Ross's son Edward, then an undergraduate at Cambridge, won the queen's prize. In 1863 they all took part with their father in the Elcho shield match. Edward Ross shot in it fifteen times, Colin three, and Hercules twice.
[Sportascrapiana, by C. H. Wheeler, includes letters from Captain Ross himself, giving full details of his chief sporting performances; see also Field, 11 Dec. 1886; Offic. Ret. Members of Parliament; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1894, ii. 1744; Silk and Scarlet, by H. H. Dixon; private information.]
ROSS, JAMES, M.D. (1837–1892), physician, third son of John Ross, a farmer, was born at Kingussie in the highlands of Scotland on 11 Jan. 1837. He was sent to the parish school of Laggan, and thence to the Normal College for Teachers in Edinburgh, but soon went to study medicine at Aberdeen, where he graduated M.B. and C.M. with the highest honours in 1863, and M.D. in 1864. He made two voyages to Greenland in a whaler, practised as an assistant for two years, and then began general practice at Newchurch in Rossendale, Lancashire. He attained considerable success in the district. He wrote articles in the ‘Practitioner,’ and published in 1869 ‘On Counter Irritation,’ in 1872 ‘The Graft Theory of Disease, being an Application of Mr. Darwin's Hypothesis of Pangenesis to the Explanation of the Phenomena of the Zymotic Diseases,’ and in 1874 ‘On Protoplasm, being an Examination of Dr. James Hutchinson Sterling's criticism of Professor Huxley's Views,’ all essays of considerable ingenuity, but somewhat involved in statement. In April 1876 he removed to Manchester, and in August was appointed pathologist to the infirmary. Though late in beginning the practical work of pathology, he laboured in the post-mortem room with all the enthusiasm of youth, and in October 1878 was elected assistant physician to the infirmary. In 1881 he published ‘A Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System,’ in two large volumes, of which a second edition appeared in 1883. He begins by a classification of these diseases into three groups, Æsthesioneuroses, Kinesioneuroses, and Trophoneuroses, or changes of sensation, of motion, and of nutrition, and then describes the diseases of the several regions of the nervous system in detail. The book contains much recent information on the subject, and some original observations and hypotheses. It was the first large modern textbook in English on its subject and was widely read. It led to his election as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1882. In 1885 he wrote a shorter ‘Handbook of Diseases of the Nervous System,’ which appeared in America, and in 1887 an essay on ‘Aphasia.’ He was elected professor of medicine in Owens College, Manchester, in 1887; and in 1888 became physician to the infirmary. In 1890 his last illness, which proved to be due to cancer of the stomach, began, and he died in Manchester on 25 Feb. 1892. Besides numerous papers in medical journals and transactions on nervous diseases, he published in 1888 an address on evolution and in 1889 one on technical education He married, in 1869, Miss Bolton, niece of his predecessor in practice at Newchurch.
[Obituary notice in Lancet, 12 March 1892; Julius Dreschfeld's Speech, in Manchester Guardian, 27 Feb. 1892; Works.]
ROSS, Sir JAMES CLARK (1800–1862), rear-admiral, and Arctic and Antarctic navigator, third son of George Ross of Balsarroch, Wigtonshire, and nephew of Andrew Ross [q. v.] and Rear-admiral Sir John Ross [q. v.], was born on 15 April 1800. He entered the navy in April 1812 on board the Briseis, with his uncle, whom he followed to the Actæon, Driver, and, in 1818, to the Isabella. In 1819–20 he was in the Hecla with William Edward Parry [q. v.], and again in the expedition of 1821–3, in
