proceedings-appi:ndix b. b-i 



APPENDIX B. 



MEMOm OF THE LATE PliOFESSOR LAWSON, 



By A. H. Mackay, LL.D., Halifax. 



Professor Cieori^e Lawson, Ph.D., LL.D., F.I.C., past president of the 

 Royal Society of Canada, was born at Newport, parish of Forgan, 

 Fifeshire, Scotland, on the 12th day of October, 1827. He was the 

 son of Alex. Lawson, and his wife Margaret McEwen, daughter of 

 Colin McEwen, of Dundee. He died at -his home in Halifax. Nova 

 Scotia, in the sixtj^-ninth year of his age, from a stroke of paralysis, 

 on the 10th day of November, 1895. 



He remained until a few months before his death in the discharge of 

 the functions of more f»ublic duties than fall to the lot of most public 

 men. On account of premonitory symptoms of failing health he had 

 but a short time before pressed his resignation of the j)rofessorship of 

 chemistry and mineralogy in Dalhousie on the governors, with the 

 purpose of still carrying on his usual course in botany in the University 

 and Halifax Medical College. He was also at this time secretary for 

 agriculture for the province of Nova Scotia, which important position 

 he had been filling for many years, publishing an agricultural journal 

 and annual crop reports, directing and stimulating agricultural societies 

 and exhibitions, and establishing and managing the Pz-ovincial School of 

 Agriculture. 



The following brief review of his career and work jn-ofesses to 

 indicate only the more salient points of an outline sketch. As a student, 

 George Lawson's intention at first was to enter upon the legal profession. 

 But his studies in law gave place to those in natui-al science ; and his ten 

 years in the University of Edinburgh developed his literary and scientific 

 powers to such an extent that he became curator of the herbarium and 

 demonstrator in botany under J. H. Balfour. In this department heAvas 

 one of the first to develop the modern biological methods of embryologi- 

 cal and histological investigation with the microscope. His literary skill 

 at this time also marked him out as the proper person to prepare the 

 catalogue of the library of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, a work 

 which was a model of its kind. He was also in demand as secretary for 

 several scientific societies, in one of which, the Royal Physical Society, 



