Obituary Notices. 161 



cessful reception of scientific researcli opened up to Scott, 

 through the patronage of Charles Darwin, the wider channel 

 of publicity of the Linnean Society, and a professional 

 career in India. In the eighth volume of the Journal of 

 the Linnean Society there is an elaborate paper of forty- 

 eight pages entitled " Observations on the Functions and 

 Structure of the Keproductive Organs in the Primulacecv," 

 communicated by his benefactor, but the experiments for 

 which were performed in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. 

 Space forbids us to trace Scott's busy life in India. The 

 splendidly illustrated monograph, " On the Tree Ferns 

 of British Sikkim," &c., published in voh xxx, of the 

 " Linnean Transactions," may be looked on as its fruit. 

 It was written when Scott was curator of the Botanical 

 Gardens, Calcutta, serving under his friend, the late Dr 

 Thomas Anderson, the superintendent. When holding an 

 acting situation on the hills at Darjeeling, Scott enjoyed 

 excellent health, but necessary exposure on low Indian 

 plains worked havoc on a European constitution, perhaps 

 already predisposed to disease by over-study, developing a 

 spleen complaint. He appeared in his old garden here in 

 May last, home on furlough, but saddening friends when 

 they looked on the broken man, once so full of promise. 

 He was to have attended the June meeting of our Society, 

 but he died at his sister's house at Garvald, East Lothian, 

 aged forty-two, on the evening of our meeting. 



The name of Egbert Fortune, it is said by our leading 

 horticultural periodical, " can never be mentioned by the 

 gardener or the botanist without feelings of respect, admira- 

 tion, and gratitude."* We have in him an earlier example 

 than Scott how well the training of mind, eye, and hands 

 may be harmoniously combined, though on a little oatmeal. 

 Fortune, too, was a south countryman. He was born at 

 Edrom, in Berwickshire. After a good education in the 

 parish school, he served his apprenticeship as a gardener, 

 ultimately working in our Eoyal Botanic Gardens for two 

 or three years, under the elder M'Nab, ere accepting the 

 superintendentship of a department of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Gardens in London in 1842, tlience to emerge 



* Gard. Chrou. Apr. 17, 1880. 

 TRANS. BOT, SOC. VOL, XIV. M 



