being the same as yours. The reason of my use of the name is this. I lived near Birmingham as a child, and we used 'gamgee' as a word for 'cotton-wool'; so in my story the families of Cotton and Gamgee are connected. I did not know as a child, though I know now, that 'Gamgee' was shortened from 'gamgee-tissue', and that it was named after its inventor (a surgeon I think) who lived between 1828 and 1886. It was probably his son who died this year, on 1 March, aged 88, after being for many years Professor of Surgery at Birmingham University. Evidently 'Sam' or something like it, is associated with the family – though I never knew this until a few days ago, when I saw Professor Gamgee's obituary notice, and saw that he was son of Sampson Gamgee – and looked in a dictionary and found that the inventor was S. Gamgee (1828-86), &¬ probably the same.