LIXNEAN SOCIETY OF LOJfDON, 4* 



as President. 1 know it eagerly endorsee the action of the 

 Council in offering vou tl.is mark of its adin.rat.on and esteem , 

 and as one who has "long enjoyed both your tnendsh>p and youi 

 scientific comradeship, it gives me the greatest pleasure to be the 

 means of conveying the Medal to you. 



The recipient made a suitable reply. 



The General Secretary having laid on the table certain obituary 

 notices, the proceedings terminated. 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 



For several vears past our Meetings have missed the pi;esence 

 of the vetenm botanist, Johx Gilbert Baker, who, m the 

 memory of many of us, was at one time an assiduous trequenter 

 of these rooms, and an indefatigable contributor to our publi- 



'"'^Boru at Guisborough, Yorkshire, on the 13th January, 1-834 

 he was only eight months old when his parents, John Bakpr and 

 his wife Mary Gilbert, removed to Thirsk. where our late iellow s 

 early boyhood was passed. In 1843 he was placed at the Iriends 

 School at Ackworth, and there began to show his bent by making 

 a collection of local plants. Three years later he was transferred 

 to the Friends' School at Bootham, York, already known tor its 

 vio-orous development in natural history study. In his tour- 

 teenth year Baker was awarded the annual prize tor his collection 

 of botanical specimens, and became curator ot the school 



herbarium. , , i . i i i • j? 4-1 „,. 



In tl>e autumn of 1847 Baker quitted school to help his tathei 

 in business, and for the next eighteen years he was busy m 

 Thirsk, but without abandoning his love for i)lants. in i^^^y •'« 

 contributed a paragraph to the ' Phytologist,' 111. p. /38, on the 

 occurrence of Carex Persoonii in the north-east of Yorkshire, lie 

 collaborated with John Nowell in a, supplement to Baines s llora 

 of Yorkshire,' which came out in 1854, and the next year saw the 

 issue of a pamphlet on British plants classified according to their 

 eeognostic relations. In 1859 he became Curator and Secretary ot 

 the Thirsk Botanical Exchange, which has preserved its existence 

 and now is known as the Botanical Exchange Club and ^"Ci^ty, 

 which came south about the same time as our late lellow. 

 Amongst Baker's friends were Daniel Oliver, then kuown as 

 Hertius,' a young Northumbrian botanist, who, tour years his 

 senior, had in 1858 been installed by Sir William Hooker as 

 Librarian at the Royal Ganlens, Kew. ^ 



The year 1863 witnessed the publication ot Bakers nrst 

 important work, 'North Yorkshire,' a volume of nearly 400 pages. 



