40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Arber's early education was obtained at King Edward's School, 

 Birmingliani, where his form-master, Mr. Turner, inspired him with 

 a love for l)otany. He subsequently worked at Mason's College and 

 University College, London, and in 1893-4 spent a year gardening 

 in the lioyal Horticultural Society's Gardens, then at Chiswick — 

 a valuable experience, which added to his many-sided interest in 

 plant-life. 



Wlien Arber went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1895, 

 his object as he said, was to qualify himself to pursue original 

 work in botany, and to follow that subject as a profession. \Vliile 

 he never lost sight of this main purpose, he soon became equally 

 keen on geology, and took both subjects for the Second Part of 

 the Tripos. The union of the two sciences naturally suggested 

 fossil botany as an appropriate field, and he at once began this 

 study, on the advice of his good friend and teaclier Prof. McKenny 

 Hughes, who appointed him Demonstrator in Palaeobotany as soon 

 as he had taken his degree. He continued to hold this post to 

 the end of his life; during his tenure of office about 5000 speci- 

 mens were added to the fossil plant collections of the Sedgwick 

 Museum, while he enlisted many able recruits for the subject 

 from among his students. 



Arber's scientific work may for tlie most part be grouped under 

 tliree heads : recent botany, morphological and evolutionary palaeo- 

 botany, and stratigraphical palaeobotany. We may now briefly 

 refer to some of his chief publications in each branch. 



His earliest papers were on recent botany; the first was a 

 tlieoretieal discussion of the relationships of the indefinite in- 

 florescences (1, 1899). In the same year he wrote on the British 

 and Swiss alpine Floras, a congenial subject, on which he was 

 already qualified to speak (2, 1899), His next two papers were on 

 a physiological question — the effect of nitrates and other snlts on 

 the assimilation of certain Green Alga?; this investigation, sug- 

 gested by his teacher Francis Darwin, was without relation to his 

 subsequent work, but it is a gain to any morphologist to have 

 once dipped into physiology (3 & 4, 1901). 



After a short interval, Arber returned to recent botany in a 

 paper on true and false synanthy in the genus Lonicera (10, 1903). 

 His chief contribution, however, to the study of living plants was 

 his volume on 'Plant Life in Alpine Switzerland' (43, 1910), 

 probably the work which gave him the niost pleasure; he knew 

 the alpine Flora with the intimacy derived from more than 25 

 visits to the Alps. The fine photographs illustrating the volume 

 were mostly his own work. The book is adapted to the general 

 reader; any detailed criticism must be left to those whose know- 

 ledge of the Flora is comparable to that of the author. 



Turning now to the main work of Arber's life, fossil botany, we 

 will first glance at some of his chief memoirs of structural and 

 morphological interest. Arber was the first to figure and to 

 describe in modern language, Binney's type-specimens of Lj/^/ijio- 

 dendron oldhamiiun (7, 1902). In the Binney collection he also 



