NATURAL HISTOKV SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. vU 



WINTER SESSION 1888-89. 



25th September, 1888. 



Mr. Peter Ewing, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. D. A. Boyd referred to the loss which the Society had 

 sustained in the death of Mr. James Ramsay, Honorary Member ; 

 and it was resolved that a memorial notice of Mr. Ramsay 

 should be recorded in the Minutes, with an expression of the 

 deep regret of the Members of the Society at the announcement 

 of his decease. 



IN ME3IORIA3I-JAMES RAMSAY. 



Mr. Ramsay was a native of Ayrshire, having been born in 

 1812 in the town of Kilwinning, where his father, Mr. James 

 Ramsay, B.A., was for many years parish schoolmaster and 

 session-clerk. After having received a good education, he came 

 to Glasgow, when about twenty-five years of age, to enter upon 

 a mercantile engagement ; and in the city he found more 

 favourable opportunities for cultivating those literary and 

 scientific tastes which he had acquired in his country home. 

 His leisure moments were devoted to reading and study, and 

 the foundations were laid of those habits of accurate research 

 by which he was so marked in after-life. He is reported to have 

 at first taken up the study of Entomology ; but the sacrifice 

 of hfe which its pursuit involved proved distasteful to him, and 

 he finally directed his attention to Botany. Here his love of 

 Nature found ample scope. He soon attained considerable 

 emmence as a botanist, and probably no man in the West of 

 Scotland was better acquainted with our native plants. During 

 two years (1867-68) he acted as Lecturer on Botany in the 

 Glasgow Mechanics' Institution, but his retiring nature in- 

 duced him to shrink from rather than court publicity. For 

 this reason his name was brought much less frequently and less 

 prominently under the public notice than he deserved, still his 

 attainments were recognised and appreciated by not a few 

 eminent scientific men. For twenty years the successive occu- 

 pants of the Chair of Botany in Glasgow University have 

 availed themselves of his assistance— always cheerfully given— 

 m the field. Here he was quite in his element, and many 



