300 Obituary Notices. 



During twelve of the seventeen years Mr Gorrie was a 

 member of the Botanical Society, lie was an office-bearer. 

 He joined the Council in 1865, and was elected a vice- 

 president in 1867 ; and for one year he occupied the presi- 

 dent's chair. 



Hewett Cottrell Watson, chief amongst English geo- 

 graphic botanists, departed this life on the 27th July 1881, 

 after nearly six months' illness, at his residence of Thames 

 Ditton, Surrey, aged seventy-eight. For the last forty years 

 Mr Watson lived in quiet seclusion. He rarely passed a 

 night away from his cottage. Of so unobtrusive and 

 nervous a temperament as to fear that a casual visitor 

 might find him a bore, he usually preferred solitude, en- 

 livened sometimes by gardening, or, in answering corre- 

 spondents, who had no other calls upon him than a common 

 enthusiasm for his favourite science. Mr Watson would 

 sometimes astonish a casual looker-in by a torrent of thanks 

 for the personal favour thus so unexpectedly conferred. 

 His later works were not placed in the hands of a pub- 

 lisher, while the impressions were so limited as to cause 

 them to be amongst the desiderata of the botanical book- 

 hunter. Yet M. Adolphe De Candolle reckons the publi- 

 cation of the Cyhde Britaimica as marking an epoch in 

 botanical history. 



Mr Watson's social position, idiosyncrasies, and scientific 

 training, admirably qualified him for his special life-work. 

 In early life he pursued preparatory legal, and then medical 

 studies, but without the zest caused by a purse vergens ad 

 inopiam, and ill-health, together with the incidence of a 

 legacy while a student, abruptly cut short his University 

 course. He was one year president of the Eoyal Medical 

 Society of Edinburgh, though he never took his degree. 

 And along with his contemporaries, John Hutton Balfour, 

 Robert Greville, Patrick Neill, and Sir Walter Trevelyan, 

 he botanised with Professor Graham in Sutherlandshire, 

 then gaining first ideas of the relations of altitude to 

 plant distribution, the elaboration of which was to be his 

 life-work. Watson also took advantage of the botanical 

 lectures and excursions of Sir William Hooker then of 

 Glasgow. He joined the Botanical Society as a Non- 



