
IN MEMORIAM—PROFESSOR THOMAS KING. 9 
full term of three years, and again, in 1884, for a like period. 
In 1886, however, he was elected a Vice-President ; and, on the 
expiry of the triennial term of office in 1889, he was once more 
appointed a member of Council. On 31st October, 1893, he was 
unanimously elected President of the Society, which office he con- 
tinued to hold at the time of his death. He also frequently 
rendered important services as a member of the Library, Museum, 
Research, Microscopical, Publishing, Summer, and other Com- 
mittees appointed by the Council. 
It may now afford us some gratification to remember that dur- 
ing what have proved to be the closing years of his life he has 
enjoyed the highest honour which the Society could bestow. 
Never was that honour more worthily conferred ; never have its 
duties been more faithfully performed. As President, he occupied 
the chair at nearly every meeting of the Society and Council since 
the date of his election, although he often expressed a wish that 
the Vice-Presidents should, when present, be allowed to exercise 
that privilege. 
Throughout the period of nearly eighteen years during which 
he has been connected with our Society, he was rarely absent 
from a meeting. Although his numerous other engagements 
occupied nearly every evening, these were so arranged as to admit 
of his regular attendance at our meetings. His circle of friends 
in the Society was very large, for nearly everyone knew him, and 
all who knew him regarded him with feelings of friendship. The 
meetings were to him a source of keen enjoyment. Like every 
true naturalist, he found pleasure not merely in acquiring infor- 
mation but in imparting it; and his readiness at all times to do 
so is apparent from the records of the Society, which show that 
he was an exhibitor of specimens at more than a hundred 
meetings. These exhibitions extended over a wide range of 
objects—zoological, botanical, and microscopic—and frequently 
included large series of fungi and other plants, which were so 
clearly explained as to render them interesting and instructive to 
all present. 
The papers and communications submitted by him to the Society 
were also numerous. They all relate to botanical subjects. Most 
of them have been published, either wholly or in abstract, in the 
Proceedings and Transactions of the Society. 
