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SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Williamson's Reminiscences. 



Reminiscences of a Yorkshire Naturalist. By the late "William Crawford 

 Williamson, LL.D., F.R.S.; edited by his wife. 8vo. Pp. xii., 22S. London: 

 George Redvvay, 1896. 



This is a book that reminds one of the biographies of Edwards and 

 Dick. John Williamson, the father, was the curator of the Scar- 

 borough Museum for twenty-seven years, and the boy obtained his 

 first insight into geological studies by assisting his father to name his 

 collection of fossils, on the publication of John Phillips' " Geology of 

 the Yorkshire Coast." Field-work suited young Williamson, and 

 though his long winter evenings were " devoted to the detested labour 

 of naming " " miserable stones," he recognised that this early practical 

 familiarity with fossils moulded the entire course of his future life. 

 After attending three Dames' schools, Williamson went to Pickering 

 to be finished, and was much surprised to find that his first Latin 

 lesson consisted of three lines of the " .'Eneid," instead of the sixty or 

 seventy lines of Virgil he had been accustomed to. But he found 

 that his new master demanded so thorough a knowledge that the three 

 lines meant far more than the many lines of his earlier days. After a 

 few months spent in France, Williamson returned to London in 1832, 

 and before going home made the acquaintance of Murchison, who 

 took him to the Geological Society and introduced him to Lonsdale ; 

 he varied these severer pleasures by a good round of theatres. On 

 reaching Scarborough he found that arrangements had been made for 

 him to enter the medical profession, and he gives a very amusing 

 account of the preparation of the drugs by himself and the senior 

 pupil, their subsequent delivery to the various patients, and the 

 evenings spent with the housekeeper-servant in the kitchen. Other 

 duties of the young medical student of those days consisted of lamp- 

 trimming, sweeping the surgery, bottle-washing, and polishing the 

 counter. The annual accounts seem to have been appalling, and the 

 delivery of them occupied two whole days on horseback. The chief 

 advantage of this early and severe medical training was the amount 

 of open-air exercise it demanded, thus giving opportunities for 

 plenty of collecting, and in the evening his drawings and notes 

 communicated to Lindley and Hutton's " Fossil Flora of Great 

 Britain " were executed at one end of the kitchen table, while the 

 housekeeper prepared the dinner at the other. 



Before the termination of his medical apprenticeship, Williamson 

 had been urged to leave Scarborough, but it required considerable 

 pressure from those who had taken an interest in him to induce him 

 to do so. At last he received a letter definitely inviting him to meet 

 the council of the Manchester Natural History Society on a certain 

 day, with a view to his selection as curator of their museum. About 

 September, 1835, therefore, Williamson found himself in Manchester, 

 and though the surroundings were not altogether pleasant by reason 



