248 WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON 



England and France. The French part of his education was 

 not altogether a success, for most of the boys at the school were 

 English. 



Passing through London on his return he had breakfast with 

 Sir Roderick Murchison, who took him to the Geological Society. 

 This was in March 1832, when he was little more than 15. 

 Certainly his entrance into the scientific world was made easy 

 for him. Would it be made equally easy now for a boy in 

 a similar position? In the same year, 1832, Williamson was 

 articled to Mr Thomas Weddell, a medical practitioner at 

 Scarborough. While with him, he continued to pursue Natural 

 History as a recreation bird-collecting for example, and also 

 botany. He writes, "I was then forming a collection of the 

 plants of Eastern Yorkshire, as well as trying to master the 

 natural classification, which was already beginning to supplant 

 the Linnean method, so long the one universally adopted 1 ." 



A memoir on the rare birds of Yorkshire was communicated 

 to the Zoological Society of London an early work though 

 not quite the earliest. While with Mr Weddell, Williamson 

 contributed a number of descriptions and drawings of oolitic 

 plants to Lindley and Hutton's Fossil Flora. He tells us how 

 the drawings had to be made in the evenings on Mr Weddell's 

 kitchen table. The plants he illustrated had for the most part 

 been collected by his father and John Bean in a small estuarian 

 deposit at Gristhorpe Bay. More than 30 species were thus 

 recorded by him. 



He also made diagrams to illustrate some lectures on 

 Vegetable Physiology given by Mr Weddell at the Mechanics' 

 Institution. It is rather surprising to find that such a course 

 was given in a country town during the early 'thirties. Pro- 

 bably the learning displayed was not very deep, for Mrs Marcet's 

 Conversations seem to have been the chief authority. 



In 1834-36 Williamson published important papers, deter- 

 mining geological zones, from the Lias to the Cornbrash, by 

 means of their fossils; subsequently he extended his zoning work 

 up to the Oxford Clay. 



The opening of the Gristhorpe tumulus in July 1834, when 



1 Reminiscences, p. 33. 



