Obituary. 175 



Miss Ethel Sarqant, F.L.S., F.K.M.S. 



It is with great regret we have to record the death of Miss Sargant, 

 which occurred on January 16 after a brief illness, at the early age 

 of fifty-four. By her death botanical science sustains a severe 

 loss, as she had obtained a well-merited position amongst botanists. 

 Miss Sargant was educated at the North London Collegiate 

 School and at Girton College, Cambridge ; she took the two parts 

 of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1884 and 1885. In 1913 she 

 was elected to an honorary fellowship of Girton College. She was 

 the first woman to preside over a Section of the British Association 

 — Section K at the Birmingham Meeting in 1913 — and she was 

 also the first woman to serve on the Council of the Linnean 

 Society of London. Miss Sargant's earlier botanical work was 

 chiefly cytological, and dealt with the formation of the sexual 

 nuclei in Lilium martagon. These researches into the structure 

 of the embryo-sac led at a later date to an interesting theory 

 regarding the meaning of " double fertilization " in Angiosperms, 

 on which subject she made a contribution to the " Annals of 

 Botany " in 1900. She was a lady of some means, and established 

 a private botanical laboratory, first at her mother's home at 

 Eeigate, and later at the " Old Eectory," Girton, Cambridge. Miss 

 (now Dr.) Ethel N . Thomas was at this time her assistant, and 

 together they did some very valuable work, chiefly on the anatomy 

 of the bulbous Monocotyledons. This research led Miss Sargant 

 to conclude that that group was derived from the Dicotyledons, as 

 a result of an adaptation to a geophilous habit. At the British 

 Association Meeting at Southport in 1903 Miss Sargant opened a 

 discussion on the " Evolution of the Monocotyledons," in which 

 she put forward her views on the subject. 



Miss Sargant's most important research, and one which she 

 made peculiarly her own, was the vascular anatomy of mono- 

 cotyledonous seedlings. She applied microtome technique with 

 great skill to the elucidation of the transition from root to stem in 

 the hypocotyl, the extreme shortness of which in the majority of 

 monocotyledonous seedlings renders the elucidation one of great 

 difficulty. Her contributions on the anatomy of seedlings, and her 

 well-known theory of the origin of the Monocotyledons, appeared 

 in the " Annals of Botany." As Tresident of Section K (British 

 Association, 1913) she gave a masterly resume of " The Develop- 

 ment of Botanicol Embryology since 1870." 

 Miss Sargant was elected F.R.M.S. in 1910. 



A. W. Sheppard. 



