The cony of Jamaica, Capromys brachyurus, found commonly in his day, but now becoming extinct, was named by Hill in Gosse's Naturalist's Sojourn; as well as four birds—three in the Birds of Jamaica and one in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, and two fishes. One bird (Mimus hillii), two fishes and four mollusca, three being Jamaican, were named after Hill.
In addition to his collaboration with Gosse of the Birds of Jamaica and the Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica, Hill's best-known literary productions are A Week at Port Royal, published at Montego Bay in 1858; Lights and Shadows of Jamaica History, published in Kingston in 1859; Eight Chapters in the History of Jamaica, 1508-1680, illustrating the settlement of the Jews in the island which appeared in 1868; and The Picaroons of One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago, which was published in Dublin in 1869.
He contributed, moreover, a large number of articles on natural history subjects to various Jamaica publications too numerous to mention. Some of these were: The Jamaica Almanacs; Transactions of the Jamaica Society of Arts; Transactions of the Royal Society of Arts of Jamaica; The Jamaica Physical Journal; Jamaica Monthly Magazine; Jamaica Quarterly Magazine. In England he contributed to the Proceedings of the Zoological Society; and in America to the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, and the Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History, New York.
In stature he was tall and commanding, though perhaps the comparison of him to Antinous made by the writer of an obituary notice was a little exaggerated. All who knew bore testimony to his generosity, philanthropy, modesty, even temper, and unfailing self-forgetfulness, his kindness of heart, his piety, and his catholicism in matters of religion. A portrait of him executed in oils, it is said, by James Wyeth, an American artist who spent a short season in the island, is in the Jamaica History Gallery at the Institute of Jamaica, which also possesses a pencil sketch of him done by himself.
For two or three years before his death Hill suffered from failing eyesight. He died, unmarried, at Spanish Town, on September 28, 1872, at the advanced age of seventy-eight. His remains were followed to the grave by an immense concourse of all classes.
Frank Cundall,
Secretary, The Institute of Jamaica
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Taken in great measure from the biographical notice by the writer in the Journal of the Institute of Jamaica, July, 1896.
[2] For a general sketch of this period see W. J. Gardner's a History of Jamaica, pp. 211-317.