300 Linnean Society. [May 24, 



tish birds, and for his great liberality to the Durham Museum, of 

 which he was one of the founders and principal patrons. The fine 

 collection of British birds, which forms the foundation of that Mu- 

 seum, was munificently purchased and presented to the Institution by 

 him, and he never missed an opportunity of adding to its value and 

 completeness by supplying its deficiencies in the rarer species. He 

 became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in the year 1799, and died 

 in the spring of the present year. 



Robert Graham, M.D., Regius Professor of Botany in the Univer- 

 sity of Edinburgh, was the third son of Dr. Robert Graham, and was 

 born at Stirling on the 7th of December 1786. In the first part of 

 his career he practised medicine in Glasgow, and in 1818 he was ap- 

 pointed to the Professorship of Botany then first established by the 

 Crown as a distinct chair in the University of that city. In 1820 he 

 was transferred to the Botanical chair of the University of Edinburgh, 

 which he filled up to the time of his death. In the same year he be- 

 came a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1821 of 

 the Linnean Society. 



Dr. Graham devoted himself assiduously and successfully to the 

 duties of his office. By his energy and enthusiasm, as well as by his 

 aflfable and pleasing manners, he succeeded in implanting a taste for 

 his favourite science among the pupils of his class, many of whom 

 have since become able teachers, as well as zealous students and 

 collectors. In the promotion of this taste he derived much assistance 

 from the botanical excursions which he made in company with his 

 pupils, not merely in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, but in distant 

 parts of Scotland, and even in England and in Ireland, in the course 

 of which several additions were made to the Scottish flora. During 

 these excursions he also laid in a large store of materials for a Flora 

 of Britain, in the preparation of which he had been long engaged, 

 but which he did not live to complete. His published works consist 

 chiefly of descriptions of new or rare plants from the Edinburgh Bo- 

 tanic Garden, which owes much of its present excellence to his ex- 

 ertions. These descriptions, together with notices of his botanical 

 excursions, appeared in the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal ' 

 and in the ' Botanical Magazine.' In the ' Companion ' to the latter 

 work, published by Sir Wm. J. Hooker, he also gave " an account 

 of the Camboge-tree of Ceylon." His favourite tribe was the Legu- 

 minosce, and he had undertaken to describe the plants of that exten- 

 sive family contained in Dr. Wallich's Indian herbarium, but subse- 

 quently relinquished the intention and transferred the plants to Mr. 

 Bentham, who has made considerable progress in their illustration. 



