24 PBOCEEDINGS OP THE 



study of Indian foodstuffs ; and on the termination of his con- 

 nection with Triuity School the special qualification thus acquired 

 hrouglit him his engagement as compiler of tlie catalogue of 

 the Indian exhibits at the International Exhibition of 18(52, and 

 finally his attachuient to the Indian Museum, where he remained 

 until its abolition in 1880, Simultaneously with the passing of 

 the economic collections of the Indian Museum to the Eo^^al 

 Botanic Gardens, Kew, Cooke's services were transferred to tliat 

 establishment, with which he remained connected until 1892, 

 ha\iug charge of the Thallophytes in the Herbarium, and reporting 

 on plant- diseases caused by fungi. But his activity ceased by no 

 means with his retirement, and in fact continued until a few 

 years before his death. 



M, C. Cooke's literary worlv covered a large field and was 

 unusually voluminous; but his real domain was mycology. Here 

 his name will be remembered long after most of his other writings 

 have been forgotten. An intimate knowledge of fungi in the 

 field aud in the herbarium, a facile pen and a skilled pencil and 

 brush; combined with great industry and much method and 

 consistency, are the strong assets of his publications, a certain 

 narrowness and obstinate conservatism — so often the legacy of 

 self-tuition — constitute their weakness. It is not the place here 

 to enter into the details of his career and merits as a prominent 

 mycologist, the less so as Mr. Ramsbottom has given a very full 

 and appreciative account of that aspect of Cooke's life in his 

 biographical sketches in the ' Journal of Botany ' for February of 

 the present year and in the ' Transactions of the British Myco- 

 logical Society,' vol. v. part 1, p. 169. At any rate his work 

 found sympathetic recognition in this country by his election as 

 an Associate of the Linnean Society in 1877 and the award of the 

 Linnean Medal in 1903. He was also made V.M.H. in 1902, 

 whilst the American universities of St. Lawrence, Tnle, and 

 New York honoured him early by conferring on him the degrees, 

 the first two of M. A. and the third of LL.D. respectively. [O. S.] 



Datid Douglas Cunningham, a Fellow of the Linnean Society 

 since 1876, died at his residence in Torquay on 31st December, 

 1914. The son of a minister who left the Church of Scotland at 

 the Disruption, Cunningham was born at Prestonpaus on 29th 

 September, 1843. Entering the Medical Faculty of the UniA^ersity 

 of Edinburgh at the age of twenty, he graduated with honours in 

 medicine in 1867, and next year joined the Indian Medical 

 Service, passing out of Netley first on the list in autumn, 1868. 



At this time much attention was being given by pathologists to 

 the theories as to the causation of cholera advanced by Hallier 

 and De Bary, and the Secretaries of State for India and for AVar 

 resolved to send to Germany the two officers who should take 

 the highest places when leaving Netley in the Indian and the 

 Army Medical Services respectively, to learn from these authors 

 the details of their theories. In order that he might master the 



