254 THE JOURIS^AL OF BOTAIS^Y 



occasion will be found in this Journal for 1888 (pp. 203-213) ; for 

 his services in organising and carrying out the celebration a special 

 vote of thanks was accorded to Carruthers by the Society. His 

 addresses in the two years followhig were notable : to the former, on 

 the relations of our recent flora to that which preceded it, reference has 

 already been made ; the other, on the portraits of Linnaeus, is printed 

 in the Froceedings of the Society for 1888-9, and is in every way an 

 admirable piece of work. Carruthers, although without a sense of 

 colour, had a singularl}^ keen appreciation of form and was a keen 

 student of engravings, and the full list of portraits appended to the 

 paper is an evidence of the thoroughness of his investigation. At a 

 later period Carruthers returned to the subject, and in 1891 com- 

 municated to the Society the notes he had made on the portraits 

 seen in Sweden during a visit to that country in the earlier part of 

 the year. 



In 1874, Carruthers took a conspicuous part in a crisis in the 

 Society's affairs, which was attended by serious differences of opinion 

 and painful — even dramatic — incidents : those who were present 

 will not forget the scene when Bentham, having in vain directed 

 Carruthers, Avho occupied the floor, to " sit down," vacated the Chair 

 and left the room, followed b}^ Sir Joseph Hooker and other sym- 

 pathisers : a studiously restrained account of the meetings of this 

 period will be found in this Journal for 1874. No one now doubts 

 that the alterations introduced as a consequence of the crisis were 

 beneficial, and these results were due in no small degree to Carruthers's 

 action. Six years later he supported with charactei-istic energy the 

 movement which resulted in the election of Dr. Daydon Jackson as 

 Secretary to the Society. On both of these occasions, and indeed on 

 others when necessity arose, Carruthers justified the description 

 given by Woodward as being " a good fighter and, when he had made 

 up his mind that his cause was a just one, very tenacious in main- 

 taining his ground " ; a certain inability to appreciate views opposed 

 to his own was not without its advantages. His fighting powers 

 had previously been called into action in connexion witli the disposal 

 of Welwitsch's Angolan Collection, wdiich by his will, of which 

 Carruthers was an executor, had been bequeathed to the British 

 Museum. Welwitsch was a Portuguese subject, and on his death in 

 1872 the collections were claimed by Portugal. The resultant 

 litigation extended to the end of 1875, when a satisfactory com- 

 promise was arrived at of which a summary will be found in the 

 Journal for that year (p. 380) ; the Department is indebted to 

 Carruthers's exertions for the splendid set of Welwitsch's plants now 

 in the Department. 



Carruthers's last public work on behalf of the Society was in 

 1907, when he was deputed by the Council to represent them at the 

 bicentenary celebrations in Sweden of the birth of Linnaeus ; on this 

 occasion the degree of Ph.D. was conferred on him b}^ the University 

 of Upsala. His portrait, painted by P. A. Hay in 1895, hangs 

 m the meeting-room of the Society. Besides being a Fellow of the 

 Linnean and of the Koyal, Carruthers was associated with many 

 other societies in whose work he took a more or less active part. In 



