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CEDIUC BUCKNALL. 



(1849-1921.) 



(With Portrait.) 



On the morning of December 12tli, 1921, within a few minutes 

 of waking from his customary rest, there passed away another devoted 

 student of systematic botany, one of the very few remaining of his 

 generation — so woefully thinned of late. The loss of Cedric Bucknall 

 will be widely felt, for those who knew him but little liked him much, 

 while his death was a grievous shock to the comrade who had been 

 almost daily by his side for half a lifetime. Yet surely this was a good 

 ending to a tlioroughly good life, and we could not \vish it otherwise. 



Cedric Bucknall was born at Bath on May 2, 1849. He showed 

 musical tendencies at a very early age, tapping out tunes on a toy 

 harmonicon as soon as he could talk. At fourteen he Avas the 

 organist of a country church. Then for a while he worked at 

 St. Matthias, Stoke Newington, under Dr. Monk, who highly esteemed 

 his skill as an executant and patience as a teacher. An engagement 

 at Southwell Minster followed. There he married in 1873 and 

 qualified for the degree of Mus. Bac. In Keble College, Oxford. 

 Appointed to the well-known church of All Saints, Clifton, In 1876, 

 he held that post until his death, maintaining the rather elaborate 

 services at a continuous high level of choral excellence. 



But although he had adopted music as a profession, taking high 

 rank as an organist and composer, blessed with a marvellous gift of 

 Improvisation, and lecturing on harmony and counterpoint in Bristol 

 University, the genuine enthusiasm that inspired his youth waned 

 perceptibly with age. It may be that the monotony of his calling 

 wearied his spirit (he played five services the day before he died), but 

 he was never known to grumble, and. Indeed, always seemed in- 

 terested In the work of training and teaching. Still it was a manifest 

 relief to get away from it all, and on our Continental tours It was 

 never an easy matter to make him touch a piano. On one excep- 

 tional night in the Austrian Tyrol I remember that something moved 

 him after dinner to sit down to a concert grand In the big dining- 

 room. Within five minutes all the hotel guests and most of the 

 servants were jostling in the doorways, attracted by unaccustomed 

 melody. Noticing this, the performer plunged straightway Into the 

 country's national airs, to the general delight. Bucknall's brain 

 could alw^ays supply his fingers with whatever might be needed at 

 the moment ; thus In a Palermo drawing-room he accompanied the 

 weird songs of a Roumanian vocalist to her entire satisfaction. 

 Once or twice in humble southern hostelries, when the Innkeeper's 

 daughter. In compliment to the foreigners, strummed out our National 

 Anthem, my companion, not a whit behind In courtesy, would 

 follow and play the fitting rejoinder with variations ad lib. On the 

 other hand. If there were a large organ within reach, Bucknall would 

 get at it somehow. In Carcassonne, that ancient city, the cathedral 

 Journal of Botany. — Vol. 60. [March, 1922.] f 



