BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 353 



We record with regret the death of William West, who was 

 born at Bradford on the 11th February, 1875, and from his earhest 

 years displayed remarkable precocity. At ten years of age, on his 

 own initiative and without the knowledge of his parents, he sat for 

 examination and won a scholarship at the J3radford Technical Col- 

 lege, being one of the youngest students ever thus admitted. Here 

 he received a grounding in elementary science, and at the end of 

 four years he went up to the Royal College of Science in London, 

 where his progress was also remarkable, and he secured the Forbes 

 Medal for botany, being at the head of the College in this subject. 

 At the age of sixteen he won a foundation scholarship at St. John's 

 College, Cambridge ; at the end of his second year he took first- 

 class honours in the first part of the Natural Science Tripos. Ill- 

 health prevented his taking the second part of the Tripos in the 

 following year, and he was again ill at the time of the examination 

 at the end of his fourth year of residence in Cambridge. Owing to 

 this, he secured only second-class honours in the second part — no 

 mean achievement, but still a result disappointing to himself. For 

 a time he acted as a science demonstrator at Cambridge, and sub- 

 sequently was employed for two years (Michaelmas, 1890, to August, 

 1892) by the Department of Botany of the British Museum in 

 revising and incorporating the Fresh-water Algse of Hassall's 

 Herbarium, and of numerous published sets. He supplied the 

 Department with many hundreds of microscope-slides of fresh- 

 water Algae. On the 8th August he left England for India, where 

 he had been appointed as biologist to the Behar Indigo Planters' 

 Association and the Indigo Improvement Syndicate, Mozufferpore, 

 Bengal. After paying short visits to friends at Bombay and Calcutta, 

 Mr. West reached Mozufferpore on August 27th, where he died (from 

 cholera) on the 14th September. From a very early age, under the 

 tuition of his father, he devoted much attention to botany. To this 

 Journal he contributed in 1898, besides other notes, a long paper 

 on Cambridgeshire plants, and in 1899 described (with Dr. Rendle) 

 and figured a new British Fresh- water Alga {Pitlwpora Oedogonia 

 var. pohjspora), and " Some Oscillarioidem from the Plankton." 

 West was a man of general accomplishments ; he was interested 

 in music and the drama, and his friends anticipated for him a 

 brilliant literary career. 



The first part of a new German Cryptogamic Flora by Dr. 

 Walter Migula the bacteriologist has been issued, being a continu- 

 ation of Dr. Thome's Flora von Deutschland, OesterreicU imd der 

 Schiveiz (Gera : F. von Zezschwitz), a publication in four volumes 

 which appeared twelve years ago, and was notable for the abundance 

 of its coloured illustrations, depicting all the phanerogamic genera 

 of Teutonic Europe, and many of the species. The cryptogamic 

 continuation is planned on similar lines, and will contain 320 

 coloured and plain lithographic plates, the small size of the plants 

 treated often permitting several figures to be exhibited on one plato. 

 Three volumes will be published, comprising in all forty to forty-five 

 parts, and the parts will be issued at intervals of five weeks at the 

 price of one mark to subscribers. The first part opens with the 



Journal OF Botany. — Vol.39. [Oct. 1901.] 2 c 



