rubiacej: batesian^ 283 



Cephaelis hexamera Wernham, nom. nov. Uragoga liexamera 



K. Schum. in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. xxviii. 104 (1901). 



No. 1398. "Small half-woody plant, one foot high; forest." 

 The species was founded upon a plant collected by Dinklage 



(no. 1800) in the Bipinde district. A good specimen was discovered 



by the Talbots in the Oban district of Nigeria. 



(To be concluded.) 



GEORGE STEPHEN WEST, M.A., D.Sc, F.L.S. 

 (1876-1919.) 



George West was born at Bradford on April 20th, 1876. The 

 father, William West (1848-1914), of whom a notice appears in this 

 Journal for the latter year (p. 161), had first-hand knowledge of 

 British flowering plants and cryptogams, and his two sons helped him 

 much : the elder, William, died in 1901 at the early age of twenty-six 

 (see Journ. Bot. 1901, 353). George began early to specialize in the 

 Algse, especially the Desmids. After passing through the Bradford 

 Technical College and the Roj^al College of Science, London, he 

 completed his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was 

 elected Hutchinson Research Student, and apjDointed demonstrator in 

 biology to the Uniyersity. Afterwards for several j-ears he filled the 

 post of lecturer in natural history at the Royal Agricultural College, 

 Cirencester, and was then appointed (1906) lecturer in botany at the 

 University of Birmingham, under the late Prof. Hillhouse, whom he 

 commemoi'ated in that gigantic sulphur-bacterium Hillhoiisia mira- 

 hilis. On the retirement of Hillhouse in 1909 he succeeded to his 

 chair, and in 1916 became Mason Professor. West was an excellent 

 teacher and lecturer, much liked by his pupils, and extremely success- 

 ful in training them in the habit of scientific research. He greatly 

 enlarged and improved his department ; the herbarium is almost 

 entirely his creation. Among his post-graduate students may be 

 mentioned Dr. Muriel Bristol and Dr. Nellie Carter, whose respective 

 researches have thrown much light on the algse of the soil and on 

 the forms of the chloroplasts of Desmids. 



West was the leading expert of this country on Freshwater Algse : 

 he could recognise at sight almost every British Desmid. His four 

 beautifully illustrated volumes on British Desmidiacese in the Ray 

 Society's publications are well known ; it is hoped to publish a fifth 

 volume based u^jon his notes. The investigations of father and son 

 in the Desmids of the whole world made it clear that that group is 

 peculiarly fitted to throw light on the problems of plant distribution 

 and the evolution of species, owing to the fact that they can seldom 

 survive desiccation even for a few hours. 



George West's chief publications on Algse generally were his 

 Treatise on British Freshwater Alga? (1904, long out of print) and 

 the volume (1916) upon the Myxoph^'cese, Peridiniea', Bacillariea?, 

 and Chlorophycese — the first of the series of Cambridge Botanical 

 Handbooks. — of which some account will be found in this Journal 



X 2 



