BOTANICAL NEWS. 91 
Botanical Society op Edinburgh. — Thursday, lUh February.— Wm. 
Gorrie, Esq., Vice-President, in the chair. The following communications were 
read : — 1. Obituary Notices of James Smith, Esq., of Jordan Hill, of Dr. G. A. 
Martin, Isle of Wight, and of George Ure Skinner, Esq., of Guatemala. By 
Professor Balfour. James Smith was born in Glasgow on 15th August, 1782. 
He was the eldest son of Archibald Smith, an eminent West India merchant. 
He was educated at the Grammar School and University of Glasgow, where 
he acquired an excellent classical education, and imbibed, a taste for physical 
science. He was the author of many valuable works, principally on geological 
subjects. He was a Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, 
and he became a member of the Botanical Society on 9th December, 1858. 
He died on 17th January last, at the age of eighty-five. Dr. George Anne 
Martin, of Ventnor, Isle of Wight, was one of the early members of the So- 
ciety, having joined on 14th April, 1836. He prosecuted his medical studies 
at the University of Edinburgh, and took his degree of M.D. in 1837. He 
settled at Ventnor, and acquired a high reputation as an able and valued prac- 
titioner. He was taken seriously ill on 28th December last with an apoplectic 
attack, and he lingered till 7th January, when he expired, at the age of sixty. 
George Ure Skinner, Esq., a partner in the house of Klee, Skinner, and Co., 
Guatemala, was a native of Newcastle, and one who had done much for natural 
history, and specially for botany. He was the second son of the late Very 
Reverend Dean John Skinner, of Forfar. At the the age of fourteen, Mr. 
Skinner's spirit of adventure led him away from home, and from that time he 
continued to maintain himself by his own exertions. He went to Central 
America as a merchant, where, amid all his busy work, he never lost sight of 
the interests of science, and lie introduced many very valuable and beautiful 
plants into this country— more particularly Orchids. Of the latter plants, 
there are many species named after him, such as Lycaste Skinneri, Cattleya 
SJcinneri, and Epidendron Skinneri. Mr. Skinner left Britain on 3rd December 
last for Central America, and, in a letter to his relative, Baillie Skinner, of 
Edinburgh, at that time, he stated that he was about to cross the Atlantic for 
the thirty-ninth time, and with the intention of returning to Britain in the 
early spring of this year, finishing with America, and intending then to retire 
for the rest of life, if God pleased to spare him. On reaching Aspinwall, 
Manama, lie was seized with yellow fever, and died there on 9th January last, 
at the age of sixty-two. 2. Notice of some Diatomaceat from Ireland. By 
Dr. W. R. M'Nab. The author stated that, while recently examining an Alga 
*'hich was collected by M. Ed. Jardin, in the Logamess— the hot stream com- 
ln g from the Great Geyser, in Iceland,— he had discovered a few Diatomace* 
amongst the filaments of the plant. They belonged chiefly to the genera Epi- 
ihenna, Cymbella, Stauroneis, Pinnularia, Synedra, and Gomphonema. All 
the larger species of these genera were exactly the same as those occurring in 
Scotland in cold water. The geographical distribution of the Diatomacea is 
an "Cresting subject, and it is also curious that^ besides possessing, as certain 
species are known to have, a very wide area of distribution, they can also en- 
dure a great difference in temperature, such as exists between the waters of 
