OBITUARY. 
DR. ROBERT KAYE GREVILLE, F.R.S.E. 
WE depart from our ordinary rule of not noticing the death of 
distinguished men, as those who contribute to our pages usually 
find a place in the annual address of the President of the Micro- 
scopical Society. In Dr. R. K. Greville, however, the world has 
not only lost a distinguished botanist, and a good and a great 
man, but we have lost a contributor whose place we cannot hope 
to supply, and whose contributions have been more numerous 
and more constant, and, we believe we may add without offend-’ 
ing any one, more valuable, than any other papers in our pages. 
These papers have been entirely devoted to the Diatomacesx, and 
present a series of minute and careful observations in these 
minute organisms such as has scarcely been presented during the 
same time in any other department of natural history. The 
illustrations of Dr. Greyille’s observations were all made under 
his own superintendence, from the beautiful and accurate draw- 
ings of his own pencil. 
He was born at Bishop Auckland, in Durham, on the 13th of 
December, 1794. He was much interested in plants at an early 
age; before he was nineteen he had prepared carefully coloured 
drawings of upwards of 250 of the native plants. He was in- 
tended for the medical profession, and studied in Edinburgh and 
London ; but circumstances having rendered him independent of 
this profession as a means of livelihood, he did not submit to an 
examination, and determined to devote himself to the study of 
botany. In 1824 the University of Glasgow conferred on him the 
degree of LL.D. He delivered several courses of popular lec- 
tures on zoology and botany, and formed large collections of 
plants and insects, which were eventually purchased by the 
University of Edinburgh. A change having taken place in his 
circumstances, he took up landscape-painting as a profession, and 
several of his pictures are to be seen in well-known collections. 
Dr. Greville took a very warm interest in many social reforms 
and in various schemes of Christian philanthropy ; and, as in 
natural history, whatever subject he undertook he devoted to it all 
his energies and talents. He took a prominent part in the agita- 
tion against slavery in the Colonies ; he was one of the four Vice- 
