PATTESON  , sionary,

bishop of Melanesia, was born in London on the 1st of April 1827, the eldest son of Sir John Patteson, justice of the King's Bench, and Frances Duke Coleridge, a near relative of Samuel Taylor Coleridge . He was educated at Ottery St Mary and at Eton, where he distinguished himself on the cricket-field . He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1845, graduated B.A. in 1848, and in 1852 became a fellow of Merton College . In 1853 he became curate of Alfington, Devon, and in the following year he was ordained priest . He then joined George Augustus Selwyn, bishop of New Zealand, in a mission to the Melanesian islands . There he laboured with great success, visiting the different islands of the group in the mission ship the " Southern Cross," and by his good sense and devotion winning the esteem and affection of the natives . His linguistic powers were ' The word is taken from an obsolete French chapine or Spanish chapin, and is of doubtful origin . The Spanish chapa, flat plate, has been suggested . The word does not occur in Italian, though it is often Italianized in English in such forms as cioppino . exceptional, and he spoke 23 languages with ease . In 1861 he was consecrated bishop of Melanesia, and fixed his headquarters at Mota . He was killed by natives at Nukapu, in the Santa Cruz group, on the loth of September 1871, the victim of a tragic error .

The traders engaged in the nefarious

traffic in Kanaka labour for Fiji and Queensland had taken to personating missionaries in order to facilitate their kidnapping; Patteson was mistaken for one of these and killed . His murderers evidently found out their mistake and repented of it, for the bishop's body was found at sea floating in a canoe, covered with a palm fibre matting, and a palm-branch in his hand . He is thus represented in the bas-relief erected in Merton College to his memory . See Life by Charlotte M . Yonge (1873) .