124 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



tised in Dublin as an oculist. His appointment as locum tenens 

 for Harvey, then Professor of Botany, in 1865-66 turned his 

 thoughts again in the direction of natural science ; and in 1869 he 

 became Professor of Botany, in succession to Alexander Dickson 

 who had been appointed to Glasgow, and Keeper of the Herbarium 

 in Trinity College in 1870 — the former post he resigned in 1904, 

 owing to failing health, retaining the latter for some time longer. 



Before his definite appointment, Wright occupied himself with 

 botanical travel in various directions. His expedition to the Aran 

 Islands in 1865 resulted in a paper published in the Proceedings 

 of the Dublin Natural History Society for 1866-7, which was his 

 principal contribution to Irish botany ; his last published note, 

 however (Notes from Bot. School 237 (1904)), relates to the occur- 

 rence of Euphrasia occidentalis in Ireland. In 1867 he visited 

 the Seychelles, where he stayed six months ; of his visit he gives 

 an account in a privately printed letter addressed to the President 

 of the University Board, who had obtained for him an extended 

 leave of absence : the botanical results of the visit are published 

 in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy xxiv. (1871). 

 Wright spent the spring of 1868 in Sicily, and published the 

 zoological results. He was at least as competent a zoologist as a 

 botanist : the list of his papers in the Royal Society's Catalogue 

 shows that his scientific interests extended over a very wide field. 

 Perhaps his most important botanical work was connected with 

 Algae, on whose structure and development he published a series 

 of memoirs. 



Wright took great interest in the Herbarium of which he was 

 Keeper, and in the first number of the Notes from the Botanical 

 School of the College — a journal published under his control and 

 at his expense from 1896 to 1905 — he gives a useful account of its 

 history and contents, in the course of which it becomes apparent 

 that, but for his activity, there would have been no herbarium to 

 keep, as it had been untouched from 1866 to 1869. He was 

 extremely generous in lending the important South African collec- 

 tions made by Harvey in connection with the Flora Gapensis, and 

 apparently not always quite careful in noting to whom they were 

 sent ; I remember being fortunate enough to put him on the track 

 of the Asclepiadacece which had been lent to a botanist who at one 

 time proposed to work at the order, and had for a long period 

 been lost sight of. 



Dr. H. H. Dixon's account in the Irish Natm-alist, to which I 

 am indebted, makes no reference to Wright's genial personahty. 

 He was a thorough Irishman — it is understood that his Home 

 Rule proclivities diminished his popularity among his colleagues ; 

 and on his rare visits to the National Herbarium he brought into 

 it a breeziness characteristic of his race. After his retirement he 

 spent much of the winters at Poggio Gherardo, the classical villa 

 near Florence where Mrs. Janet Ross has for many years extended 

 charming hospitality to literary men. Here I last met him in 

 1908 ; he was as genial and amusing as ever, but there was a feel- 

 ing that the visit would be his last, as indeed it proved to be. 



