12 Ohitiiary Notices. [sess. lt. 



contemporary science. For these he received the Wollaston 

 Fund in 1859, from the London Geological Society; and the 

 Xeill Prize Gold Medal and proceeds of the Fund, from the 

 Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in 1875. But that unique 

 power of observation thus trained was available also in the 

 field of fossil botany, which mainly absorbed his closing years. 

 He was elected an Associate at our January meeting of 1870, 

 and in the following six years both laid before us new finds 

 in fossil botany, and created fresh enthusiasm for its study 

 even amongst veterans like Professor John Hutton Balfour 

 and Sir Eobert Christison. He received much kindly 

 encouragement from the first of these worthies in making 

 thorough searches in those new localities for fossil plants, 

 then just laid open by industrial enterprise around Edin- 

 burgh. He had the co-operation of his son, then as 

 now an officer of the Government Geological Survey. No 

 one more thoroughly realised the necessity of a perfect 

 knowledge of present-day plants for the true diagnosis of 

 those iml.tedded in the rocks. Though lacking the modern 

 discipline of the botanical laboratory, his wonderful power of 

 seeing facts passed over by others served him well, in many 

 localities opened up in 1870, rich in new finds in paleo- 

 botany, such as the new railway tunnel at Colinton, or the 

 waste-shale heaps at Straiton or West Calder, at Cleugh near 

 Falkirk, or Devonside near Tillicoultry, as well as the Grange 

 Quarry, Burntisland. The results of these w^ere given in a 

 series of seven papers which run through our Transactions 

 from 1871 to 1875. As brevity was considered a chief merit 

 ill a scientific connnunication by Peach, his brief notices give 

 no idea of the interest excited by the large sepia drawings, 

 as well as the neat way in which the fossils, often mounted 

 in glass cases so as to show both sides of the stem, and 

 having the special characteristics of each specimen carefully 

 indicated by arrows (huwn on paper which was gummed to 

 the stone. From our limited audiences several young 

 workers were thus incited to enter this little-trod field of 

 science. Peach demonstrated Cardiocarpum to be the 

 fruit of Antholithes ritcairnim; he showed the close relation- 

 ship of Staphylopieris (?) with Sphenopteris affinis, besides 

 giving new localities in Scotland for many English 

 carboniferous jjlants. Peach's last paper, contributed in 



