ur, 



CLEMEXT KEID, F.R.S. 



lS.33-1916. 



Br James Gtroves, F.L.S. 

 (With portrait.) 



Bv the death of Clement Keid we have lost not only a distin- 

 guished geologist, hut one whose botanical knowledge and attainments 

 i)i his own particular department were unique. For many years 

 prior to his retirement from official life, his cheery, genial, energetic 

 personality was a familiar one at the Linnean and Greological Societies, 

 the British Association and the many other places of meeting of the 

 votaries of Natural Science. 



Olement Keid was horn on the 6th Jan., 1853. Mrs. Reid has 

 kindly furnished me with the following particulars with regard to his 

 early life. 



" His father was Edward Ker Reid, a London goldsmith, and his 

 mother a niece of Michael Faraday, a relationship which had a marked 

 effect upon his life. The influence of the great scientific spirit of 

 Faraday permeated the whole surroundings of his childhood, and gave 

 encouragement to the natural bent of his mind. From his mother 

 he inherited a great love of nature, especially of flowers. This love 

 stood him in good stead in childhood, when for some years he was 

 de.if from the after effects of scarlet fever, and being unable to join 

 in play with other children, was compelled to seek special interests 

 of his own. These he found in long solitary rambles about the 

 neighbourhood of North London. It was during these rambles he 

 laid the foundations of his scientific knowledge, and trained his 

 powers of observation. He owed little to school training, for a large 

 family and rather small means compelled his parents to curtail his 

 schooling at an early age, and at 14 he was entered in a publisher's 

 office. He greatl}^ disliked the work, though in after ^'■ears he appre- 

 ciated the value of a business training, and when after seven years he 

 heard through his friend Mr. H. B, Woodward of the likelihood of a 

 vacancy on the Greological Survey, he determined to throw up his 

 work and devote himself to qualifying for the Survey appointment. 

 He was successful in obtaining this, his appointment datino: from 

 1874. 



'' For a man with his great love of nature, the life of the Greological 

 Survey was an ideal one. The long solitary walks and days in the 

 open were his delight, as they had been in childhood. He used to say 

 it was when walking that ideas flashed into his mind. And through 

 his knowledge and observation of the present world he learned to 

 interpret the past. He was essentially a naturalist, and it was from 

 the standpoint of a naturalist he regarded geology. The geological 

 world he looked upon was a living world, a world of many aspects but 

 of an essential unity. He held that to form a true judgement of past 

 causes and conditions it was necessary to gather and weigh evidence 

 from as many sources as possible. He was impatient of a well- 



JOURXAL OF BoTAXy. — Yul„ O-J. fJlNE. 1017J M 



