12 OhUitary Notice. 



branches of natural history made by liini at this time, — 

 some of them now in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden in Edinburgh, and others in public collections in 

 different parts of the kingdom. The work of this period of 

 his life bore also plentiful fruit in the extensive knowledge 

 he in after years displayed of the habits and characters of 

 tlie indigenous plants and animals of this country, 



John Sadler soon rendered himself an essential part of 

 the establishment of the Royal Botanic Garden, and was 

 promoted to be assistant to my father, then Professor of 

 Botany. This position he occupied, and faithfully dis- 

 charged the duties that devolved upon him, during nearly 

 a quarter of a century. To those acquainted with the Ro3'al 

 Botanic Garden during this period, the triumvirate which 

 controlled its affairs — my father in the Chair of Botany, 

 James M'Nab as curator, and John Sadler as assistant — a 

 triumvirate broken up in 1878 by the death of Mr M'Nab, 

 followed by my father's retirement in 1879 — will be long 

 remembered. 



In 1858 Sadler read his first paper before this Society. 

 It is " A Notice of an Excursion along the line of the 

 Roman Wall from Chollerfield to Wall Town Crags," and 

 since that year hardly a meeting of the Society has taken 

 place without his being present, and no volume of Transac- 

 tioris has appeared without some record of his work in it. 

 In that same year he was appointed Assistant-Secretary of 

 the Society, an office he filled until 1879, when pressure of 

 other duties compelled him to sever his long connection 

 vdth the Society. The satisfactory manner in which he 

 discharged his duties was better emphasised by the 

 Society itself than it can be by any word of mine, when 

 it presented him on his retirement with a handsome testi- 

 monial of approval. But I may be allowed to say that, as 

 the success of a Society such as this depends in a very 

 eminent degree upon the efficiency of the secretariat, so a 

 large share in promoting the prosperity which has attended 

 the Botanical Society of Edinburgh may be claimed for 

 John Sadler. 



Another Society, in the promotion of which Sadler took 

 a great interest and part, is the Scottish Arboricultural 

 Society. Of it he became Serrptary in 1862, and retained 



