GLASGOW PROFESSORSHIP 131 



took these home for further examination. An interesting event 

 in these half-hours was the professor calling upon such students 

 as volunteered for being examined, to demonstrate the structure 

 of a plant or fruit placed in the hands of the whole class for this 

 purpose. The lectures were illustrated by blackboard drawings, 

 probably these were a special feature in the hands of so expe- 

 rienced an artist as he, and also by large coloured drawings, 

 chiefly of medicinal plants, which were hung on the walls. 

 Another feature, which happily still survives, was the collection 

 of lithographed illustrations of the organs of plants, a copy of 

 which was placed before every two students. The first edition 

 of these drawings appears to have been by his own hand. But 

 in 1837 a thin quarto volume of Botanical Illustrations was pro- 

 duced, "being a series of above a thousand figures, selected from the 

 best sources, designed to explain the terms employed in a course 

 of Lectures on Botany." The plates were executed by Walter 

 Fitch, who was originally a pattern-drawer in a calico-printing 

 establishment, and entered the service of Sir William in 1834- 

 This great botanical artist continued to assist Sir William till the 

 death of the latter, and himself died at Kew in 1 892. A number of 

 copies of this early work of Fitch remain to the present day in 

 the Botanical Department in Glasgow. 



Other branches, however, besides Descriptive Organography 

 were taken up. Naturally the plants of medicinal value figured 

 largely in the course, which was primarily for medical students. 

 Illustrative specimens, of which Sir William gathered a large 

 collection, were handed round for inspection. These, together 

 with other objects of economic interest finally made their way to 

 Kew, and were embodied in the great collections of the Kew 

 Museums. The branch of anatomy of the plant-tissues was not 

 neglected. Of this he wrote at the time of taking up the duties 

 of the chair, "it is a subject to which I have never attended, and 

 authors are so much at variance as to their opinions, and on the 

 facts too, that I really do not know whom to follow." He con- 

 tinues with a remark which is singularly like what one might 

 have heard in the early seventies, just before the revival of the 

 laboratory study of plants in this country. He remarked that 

 "Mirbel has seen what nobody else can: so nobody contradicts 



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