ALEXANDER DICKSON 301 



geniality and kindliness ; he took immense pains over his 

 lectures, spending hours daily over the making of fresh drawings 

 on the blackboard for his classes, holding that a student would 

 copy a temporary sketch although he would not copy a perma- 

 nent wall-diagram ; the lecture itself was a model of scientific 

 presentment ; at excursions he was untiring in demonstration 

 and in fruitful suggestion, and he was always ready to give of 

 his best to his pupils ; but his real love was for research and 

 he carried out many organographical investigations which have 

 added to the sum of natural knowledge. His record in pub- 

 lished papers far exceeds that of any of his predecessors, and the 

 quality of his work recalls that of Irmisch. Flower-morphology, 

 embryogeny, teratology, were the subjects to which he gave most 

 attention in research, and in them he obtained results of solid 

 and permanent value. For a time the subject of phyllotaxy 

 occupied him, but it is not a fruitful theme although it gave him 

 opportunity for showing his power of clear analysis ; much more 

 interesting was his subsequent work on pitcher plants of kinds. 



Dickson possessed great skill in manipulation, and was 

 strikingly effective in the use of his pencil in artistic delineation 

 of the objects of his investigation. Careful in his work he took 

 endless pains to secure that accuracy which it always shows. 

 Further, his subject is always illumined by the comparative 

 method of treatment which his wide knowledge and sound 

 critical faculty enabled him to bring to bear upon it. 



The duties of his lairdship were no light ones to Dickson 

 who had set himself to build up again what had come to him in 

 an impoverished condition, and affairs of Church and State were 

 a very real interest to him. Amidst all these ties, to which has 

 to be added the administration of the Botanic Garden, in which 

 during his tenure a new and enlarged Lecture Hall was built, 

 he found time to cultivate the musical faculty for which he was 

 distinguished ; not only was he a pianist of mark, but he found 

 absorbing zest in the collecting of national airs sung by the 

 peasants of Scotland. 



In the line of Professors of Botany in Edinburgh no one 

 ranked higher in distinction than Alexander Dickson, with whose 

 name I conclude this sketch. 



