510 Obituary Notices. [sess. lui. 



1860, ha\dng previously, iu accordance with his biological 

 proclivities, studied under Kolliker in Wiirzburg and Virchow 

 in Berlin. 



His career as a teacher of botany began in the summer 

 of 1862, when he conducted the class of botany in the 

 University of Aberdeen for Professor Dickie, who was at 

 the time incapacitated by bad health. He thus obtained 

 an opportunity for displaying his merits as a teacher ; and 

 his success proved, of much value in securing for him in 

 1866 the chair of Botany in the University of Dublin. 

 Two years afterwards he was appointed Professor of Botany 

 in the University of Glasgow, where he confirmed his early 

 reputation as a clear and painstaking teacher and an 

 enthusiastic worker in structural and morphological botany. 



Dr Dickson remained in Glasgow from 1866 till 1879. 

 In the latter year, the professorship of botany in the 

 University of Edinburgh became vacant, on the resigna- 

 tion, caused ■ by failing liealth, of the renowned and veteran 

 Professor Balfour ; and to this great botanical position, Dr 

 Dickson was promoted by the Curators. In the following 

 year, he received from the Crown also the appointment of 

 Begius Professor of Ijotany to the University of Edinburgh, 

 as well as that of Eegius Keeper of the Koyal Botanic 

 Garden. 



It is with his work as a professor in Edinburgh that the 

 members of this Society are most familiar. The recollection 

 of that work is still so vividly present among us, that, but 

 for the requirement of a historical record, it would be 

 needless to dwell on it. We find him entering on his duties 

 imbued with the same conception of the far-reaching alfinities 

 between science and art or practice as was recognised in 

 the early developments of liis biological career. In his 

 inaugural address he adopted for his suljject tlie consideration 

 of some remarkable parallels between the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms as regards specialisation of form for the perform- 

 ance of different functions. For this purpose he compared a 

 flowering plant with a zoophyte, and showed how unity 

 of organisation is manifest throughout nature. The same 

 lesson was indicated as, twenty years before, he had taught 

 in his inaugural address to the Koyal Medical Society, 

 that the cultivation of every department of biological science 



