R. C. Watson. 301 



Resident Member in 1837. A remarkable paper he read 

 before us will be found in the first volume of our Trans- 

 actions, " On the Geographical Distribution of Ferns in the 

 Azores," giving the results of a botanising trip made to 

 these islands in H.M. surveying war steamer " Styx," in 

 which Mr Watson paid his own expenses. He gave great 

 aid in the distribution of specimens amongst our members, 

 at one time an important feature of our institution. The 

 London Catalogue of British Plants, together with the 

 Botanical Exchange and Record Clubs, received much of 

 his later efi'orts in this direction of labour. An interesting 

 correspondence with the late William Brand, W.S., now in 

 the Society's archives, indicates how Watson would have 

 had our Herbarium arranged so as best to demonstrate 

 geographic distribution, in his opinion the chief object of 

 such a collection. He remarks, in Topographical Botany, 

 — on finishing which he once intended to burn his own 

 unsurpassed herbarium, — " I do not believe that there are 

 fifty English botanists who sufficiently comprehend the 

 philosophy of plant distribution to take any great interest 

 in such illustrations. The majority amongst botanists are 

 simply collectors of specimens ; an innocent amusement of 

 rather limited science." Mr Watson held advanced opin- 

 ions on many subjects. Early initiated to the love of plants 

 by the kind words of Bishop Stanley of Norwich, thejidus 

 Achates of his schoolmate the late Dean Stanley, and the 

 coadjutor with George Combe in missionary enterprises for 

 promulgating phrenology, can we wonder that he was ever 

 to the front, with the rolling wheels of intellectual cliange 

 so characteristic of his times ? Space forbids discussion of 

 his views of species and varieties ; but as more than one 

 obituarist has claimed him as a Darwinian, nay, a reformer 

 before this great so-called reformation, let us allow him 

 explanatory utterance. In Topographical Botany he thus 

 writes: — "I do not recognise in the clever arguing and 

 strictly conscientious writings of Charles Darwin, any guid- 

 ing clue truly sufficient to account for the origin of the 

 British flora, or anything which satisfactorily explains well- 

 ascertained peculiarities in the distribution of its con- 

 stituent plants either internal or external. At the same time, 

 1 would not be understood to declare that the known facts 



