2 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and lamented friend, took up his duties in Edinburgh. 

 Marshall Ward was appointed Professor at Cambridge, and 

 Bower at Glasgow. By those whose names I have mentioned 

 and others, the teaching of botany was revolutionised. It was 

 placed on the same plane and treated by the same method as 

 zoology had been treated by Thomas Huxley some quarter 

 of a century earlier. This is not merely a surmise. I think 

 I can claim practical experience. It was my lot a few years 

 after this to hold the post of Lecturer in Natural History in the 

 Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, 

 which at that time embraced two subjects, geology and botany, 

 and I found that botany was no longer a dry study of dry 

 plants with long and still drier names, but one with a living 

 interest of its own, and the agricultural student, who was 

 allowed to take one or two optional subjects for examination 

 together with the compulsory subjects, such as agriculture and 

 chemistry, frequently took the subject of botany and did 

 uncommonly well in it. There was a diploma offered by the 

 College at Cirencester, and similar diplomas are given by the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Highland and 

 Agricultural Society of Scotland, and each year a small per- 

 centage of students would enter for one, two, or three of these. 



There was one student whose career should be recorded. 

 He came to the College having already taken a London 

 University B.A. degree, passing in the first class. He was 

 trained under his father previously as a land agent, and was 

 already in charge of a large and varied estate in the Midland 

 Counties of England. By arrangement with the owners, he 

 took a course at the College of six sessions, occupying two 

 years. He took the diploma of the College, and shortly after- 

 wards entered for that of the Royal Agricultural Society. 

 This entailed an examination of six days. "Thinking I had 

 no chance of coming out top," he wrote to me recently in a 

 letter, "and wanting to do something else I skipped the 

 Veterinary examination. When the list came out, however, 

 I turned out to be top, and so was awarded the Twenty-five 

 Pounds prize, and a Life Membership of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, very much to my surprise." He ends by saying, 

 " I enjoyed the two years at Cirencester, not much perhaps 

 the chemistry and veterinary studies, but very much indeed 

 botany and geology and agriculture, and the surroundings 



