IN MEMORY OF JOHN GERARD, S.J. 59 



In all the circumstances it will doubtless be generally accept- 

 able to retain the name Tarenna for this genus, and to reject 

 Cupi, although the latter is the correct name if the rules of the 

 Vienna Congress be strictly observed. 



The first African species were originally described by Bentham 

 in Hook. Niger El. 389-90, under Stylocoryne ( = Stylocoryna), a 

 genus comprised of species subsequently relegated to various 

 genera, chiefly Bandia. 



IN MBMOEY OF JOHN GERARD, S.J. 

 (1840-1912.) 



The Rev. John Gerard, S.J., who died at the Jesuit house in 

 Farm Street on the 13th of December, was born in Edinburgh on 

 May 30th, 1840. His father was Colonel Archibald Gerard of the 

 92nd Highlanders ; his brother, the late General Sir Montagu 

 Gerard, K.C.B., was a distinguished officer of the Indian Army, 

 and to some extent shared Father Gerard's interest in natural 

 history — a few plants collected by him in the Western Himalayas 

 are in the National Herbarium. Curiously unlike the traditional 

 notion of a Jesuit, Father Gerard's association with the Society 

 dated from early youth, as he entered the Jesuit novitiate in 

 1856. After his philosophical course, at the end of which in 

 1859 he took his B.A. degree at the London University, he was 

 engaged in teaching and study until his ordination in September 

 1873 ; after this he was put in charge of the school course at 

 St. Francis Xavier's, Liverpool, and subsequently at Stonyhurst, 

 where he remained until his transference to London in 1893. 



It was at Stonyhurst that Father Gerard developed the taste 

 for natural history which had interested him from his earliest 

 years ; a notebook, written in a very childish hand, is devoted to 

 phenological observations : " when I first and last saw birds, 

 butterflies, flowers, &c." He went to Stonyhurst at the period 

 when the public schools were devoting much attention to Natural 

 Science. Father Gerard saw in it a powerful means of arousing 

 interest and of encouraging observation, and soon communicated 

 to his pupils — some of whom still speak of the pleasure of a walk 

 with him — his own enthusiasm. The " Preliminary Flora of 

 Stonyhurst," printed in the Stonyhurst Magazine for May, 1886, 

 of which a second edition was published at Clitheroe as a pam- 

 phlet in 1891, was mainly the outcome of these walks, and both, 

 although no name is associated with them as author, are practi- 

 cally Father Gerard's work. He became editor of The Month 

 shortly after his arrival in London, and soon began to publish in 

 its pages the series of papers which have been issued by the 

 Catholic Truth Society in collected form under the title Essays in 

 Un-natural History. At the period when they began, the writings 

 of Grant Allen were greatly in vogue, their author, by dint of a 

 lively imagination and an attractive style, having secured the ear 

 of the pseudo-scientific public. Father Gerard subjected Allen's 

 statements to examination by the light of facts, and had little 



