THOMAS HICK. 195 



force of character and graphic aptitude in expressing what he knew ; 

 before he had accomplished any of what it is the custom to style 

 ' original ' investigation — definite little secrets wormed by tireless 

 observation from the Grand Arcana of Life. 



Awakening interest in botany, for my early love like that of 

 many another youth (Hick being seven years my senior) was 

 entomology and ornithology, first brought me into contact with him 

 in 1868. He, William Todd, and James Abbott were already 

 concerned with problems in geology and theology cognate to life, 

 and soon after we had 'kidneyed' to one another, Huxley delivered 

 himself of that famous Edinburgh address on ' The Physical Basis 

 of Life,' which stirred up into a blaze the smouldering clerical 

 animosities which Darwin had, in another form, first raised with his 

 'Origin of Species,' some seven years previous. Early in 1870, 

 Hick along with Todd, James W. Davis, Abbott, W. Watson, 

 (another schoolmaster), and myself, formed ourselves into a small 

 Mutual Improvement Society, meeting fortnightly at our homes in 

 turn to read papers and discuss points in Science Progress. This, 

 which we dignified by the name of the Leeds Scientific Association, 

 was, I believe, in part the origin of the Leeds Naturalists' Society. 

 Before that, for years, the nature-students of Leeds, mainly working- 

 men whom the 'Philosophical' gentlemen of the time in no way 

 recognised, used to meet at a Hall or Museum behind the present 

 Corn Exchange, Davis and Hick first met tliere, Todd being their 

 introducer. None of the friendships there formed with Hick were, 

 I think, ever broken or even strained. Hick and Davis's characters 

 being equally unjealous, earnest and sterling. For some years 

 Hick was the reviewer of science books for the 'Leeds Mercury,' and 

 many of his trenchant and well-informed critiques are remembered 

 yet, notably that on 'As Ptegards Protoplasm' — a reply to Huxley's 

 'Lay Sermon,' by Hutchison Stirling. Hick's first original paper, 

 about 1880, was, I recollect, on an overlooked point in the 

 morphology of Ficaria verna. It showed an unusual gift of exact 

 observation, and foreshadowed the brilliancy of later papers in the 

 'Journal of Botany' on the Continuity of Protoplasm in the tissues 

 of certain Marine Algse. He was too careful and self-critical a 

 worker to produce voluminously; albeit his later researches in the 

 field of Fossil Botany at Manchester, for which more credit is his 

 due than any mere list of his obiter dicta, as the Aide of a rather 

 jealous Chief would seem to warrant, must prove a sufficient and 

 enduring monument. ' 



Thomas Hick was a singularly simple-minded, unaffected, trans- 

 parently-honest Yorkshireman ; strangely little exalted for one with 

 such a gift of brain. His lectures were always marvels of lucidity 

 and arrangement. A trifie blunt of speech and never quite losing 

 his Yorkshire accent, he was respected by who listened to him, and 

 loved by who knew him socially. Very matter-of-fact most people 

 would have said, yet, at times, 1 am reminded, a vein of sentiment 

 (as mayhap is the case with most of us) occasionally shewed itself 

 running tiirough the solid strata of his mental organism. If this 

 seems to belie, — to be at variance with outspoken materiaHsm, we 



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