News has been received from New Zealand of the death at Wellington in her sixty-third year, of Ellison Thorburn, Lady M'Clure of Colinton, second daughter of the late Robert Andrew Macfie, F.R.S.E. of Dreghorn Castle, Midlothian.

This family descends from the ancient West Highland clan of Macduffie whose chief owned the islands of Colonsay and Oransay until the seventeenth century, when the Macdonalds of Colkitto obtained possession. The clan figures in Scott's "Lord of the Isles."

After the loss of their island home, Lady M'Clure's ancestors removed to Ayrshire, but eventually settled at Inverkip, where Langhouse is situated, the seat of her kinsman, the present William Macfie of Langhouse and Airds. A grandson of the first Laird of Langhouse was Robert Andrew Macfie aforesaid, a successful merchant of Leith and Liverpool, who acquired the Dreghorn estate and founded the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce.

He was a prominent advocate of free trade, and as member for the Leith Burghs in the Parliament of 1868-74, proposed to extend its operations even to inventions, introducing a novel scheme of "national recompenses" in lieu of patents. He was also a voluminous writer on educational and political subjects.

His eldest son is the present Laird of Dreghorn, while his eldest daughter married a Glasgow minister, the Rev James Johnston, sometime of Free St James's. The late Lady M'Clure leaves no issue by her marriage in 1877 at Dreghorn Castle to Sir Thomas McClure, first and last Baronet of Belmont, Co. Down, Vice-Lieutenant of that county and M.P. for Belfast and Londonderry. He was some years older than his father-in-law the Laird of Dreghorn, and died in 1893