1895. OBITUARY. 143 



have only been at all fully realised in recent years. Hampered by a 

 strong prejudice in favour of a certain classification of Palaeozoic 

 plants, established by Adolphe Brongniart, and cramped by a con- 

 ception of botanical morphology founded solely on recent plants, 

 botanists were slow to accept Williamson's startling conclusions, and 

 it was only by the gradual accumulation of convincing evidence that 

 his results gained general acceptance. There is no longer any serious 

 attempt to deny the existence in the Coal-Measure forests of various 

 arborescent vascular cryptogams, which in their fructification agreed 

 in all essential respects with recent members of the same class, 

 but in their manner of secondary growth in thickness showed 

 the closest agreement with gymnospermous or dicotyledonous 

 trees. Last year there appeared the first of a new series 

 of memoirs under the joint authorship of Professor Williamson and 

 Dr. D. H. Scott ; the wealth of material dealt with, and the extra- 

 ordinary completeness of the detailed description of such plants as 

 Calamites and Sphenophyllum, afford some indication of the value of that 

 class of work of which Williamson was to a large extent the founder. 

 In addition to the Royal Society memoirs, reference must be made to 

 the masterly monograph on Stigmaria ficoides, contributed to the 

 Palaeontographical Society in 1886. In the Proceedings of the 

 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society there are numerous 

 papers on fossil plants by Professor Williamson, and the last of his 

 botanical contributions is an exhaustive and elaborate account of 

 certain points in the growth and development of Carboniferous 

 Lepidodendra, communicated in October, 1894, to the society of 

 which he was president for more than thirty years. 



Those who were privileged to know Williamson, not only as a 

 botanist, but as a personal friend, will always think of him as a striking 

 personality, in which the enthusiasm of the real student was com- 

 bined with a generous and open-hearted spirit. Emphatic in his 

 expression of opinion, and at times carried away by the strength of 

 his own convictions, Williamson would occasionally be led to enun- 

 ciate a general truth in somewhat too sweeping terms. It was this 

 strength of conviction, a steady determination of purpose, and an 

 eager longing to solve difficult problems which enabled him to achieve 

 so much towards the advancement of botanical science. Not only 

 was he a thorough and cautious student in special branches of 

 science, but at the same time a keen naturalist, and eminently suc- 

 cessful as a popular exponent of botany and geology. To attempt to 

 form any just estimate of the value of Williamson's life-work, or to 

 call up, however imperfectly, the most striking traits in his character, 

 is a difficult task for one who, like the present writer, is under a very 

 strong obligation to the never-wavering kindness and true friendship 

 of the most affectionate and generous of teachers. His reputation as 

 a man of science may be safely left to the judgment of Continental 

 colleagues, and to future generations of palaeobotanical students. 



A. C. S. 



