242 The Scottish Naturalist. 



University of Edinburgh. Among his teachers were several of 

 the best known leaders of science in Paris. He also studied art 

 in Paris and in Rome, and employed his artistic talents in the 

 illustration of his writings on the Brachiopoda. 



It is understood that his valuable collections are to be deposited 

 in the British Museum. 



Dr. J. Gilchrist, for over thirty years superintendent in the 

 Crichton Institution in Dumfries, died on Monday, 7th December, 

 1885. Throughout his life he took a warm interest in Natural 

 Science, and in antiquarian researches ; and the active part he 

 took in promoting such studies in the south of Scotland, renders 

 his death a great loss to the Dumfries & Galloway Antiquarian 

 Society, of which he was President at the time of his death, and had 

 been so during several years. We quote from the Dumfries Herald 

 a notice of him as a scientist. " Perhaps it was as a scientist we 

 knew him best. His favourite studies were geology and minera- 

 logy, but he had more than a mere general knowledge of most of 

 the principal branches of natural science. His great work in this 

 district was the establishing of a Natural History and Antiquarian 

 Society for Dumfriesshire and Galloway, which was instituted on 

 the 20th November, 1862. According to the first volume of 

 Transactions, Dr. Gilchrist convened a meeting of gentlemen in- 

 terested in the cultivation of natural history and antiquarian re- 

 search, with the result that a vigorous society was started into life, 

 the original committee being Mr. Thos. Aird, Mr. M'Diarmid, 

 Dr. Gilchrist, Mr. Thorburn, Mr. M'llwraith, Mr. W. G. Gibson, 

 Provost Caldow, Mr. M'Dowal, Rev. Mr. Goold, and Dr. Dickson. 

 u The deceased gentleman, who had passed the age of three-score 

 years and ten, lived a life of great activity, and even in his later 

 years he had an elasticity of step and a buoyancy of spirit which 

 might have been envied by much younger men. He was a man 

 of reflective habits, a vigorous thinker, while his quickness of ap- 

 prehension and tenacity of memory greatly assisted him in those 

 scientific pursuits to the study of which he abandoned himself with 

 ardour. As a geologist, he was able to give us much invaluable 

 information relating to our district ; and in him many a young 

 student found a ready teacher in those subjects with which the 

 Doctor had a special acquaintance. Last winter he organised 

 and conducted at his own house classes in natural history, to 



