



* 



379 



them out. attracted immediate attention on the part of those 

 competent to judge. As a consequence he was selected, towards 

 the end of 187G, to fill the post of Government Botanist in British 

 Guiana. But before the date fixed for his departure to take up 

 his new duties, the late Professor G. Dickie, M.D., F.R.S., then 

 Professor of Botany at Aberdeen, was compelled, through failing 

 health, to relinquish his chair. Trail was appointed by the 

 Crown to fill the vacant post. He entered on his duties as Pro- 

 fessor at the opening of the summer session of 1877, shortly after 

 his twenty-sixth birthday. Having fulfilled them with singular 

 efficiency and distinction for forty-two yenrs he has now died in 



harness, to the sorrow of his many friends, in his sixty-ninth 

 year. 



The appended list of contributions by Trail to natural know- 

 ledge at first sight suggests that early in his career he was more 

 addicted to zoological than to botanical observation, though the 

 fact that as early as 1871 he was giving close attention to galls, 

 on which he was to acquire a reputation that is European rather 

 than merely British, should in itself prevent a conclusion so 



- superficial. The fact that on his return from the expedition to 



South America he at once took a, distinguished place as a 

 descriptive botanist and became an authority on a family so 

 difficult as the Palms, shows that if he had till then published 

 few botanical notes this was not because botanical questions had 

 been neglected. If the same evidence suggests an altered out- 

 look after his appointment to a botanical chair the inference is 

 equally without foundation. Doubtless duty now prescribed the 

 devotion of a very scanty leisure to the publication of botanical 

 rather than zoological observations. But his living interest in 

 the whole field of natural history never abated; throughout his 

 career he was as alert to zoological as to botanical facts and 

 phenomena ; the range of his knowledge was as wide, the precision 



*■ of his observation was as marked in the one field of natural 



history or the other. One of the chief sources of the authority 

 with which he could speak and of the respect with which he was 

 listened to lay in his intimate acquaintance at first hand with 

 the characters, the habits and the interrelationships of all living 

 things that came within the scope of his observation. How fully 

 he had mastered both subjects and with what ease he could pass 

 from one to the other may be appreciated from the circumstance 

 that when in 1878 the Natural History chair at Aberdeen fell 

 vacant, Trail for a whole year conducted the class of zoology as 

 well as that of botany to the satisfaction alike of the students and 

 of his colleagues, until the new teacher was in a position to take 

 up his duties. 



Yet Trail's published notes and paper-, numerous as they are, 

 bardly represent a tithe of the vast store of observed facts, freely 

 at the disposal of all who might seek information from him, 

 which his friends have wished, and now wish more than ever, to 

 see placed on permanent record. This inhibition of output, so 

 deeply to be regretted, was a consequence of Trail's high sense 

 of duty. When he began botanical teaching at Aberdeen, the 

 equipment of his department, through no fault on the part of his 

 distinguished predeee>sor and through no want of sympathy on 





