September 5, 1895] 



NATURE 



441 



sometimes as careless as he was capable, and that he 

 rarely used his great abilities to the full. He belonged to 

 the school of explorers who prefer rapid traverses and 

 pioneer work, to scientific investigations and detailed 

 surveys. He reminds us by his geographical work of 

 Livingstone, and by his love of sport of Sclous, rather 

 than of men like Fischer, .Schwcinfurth and Junker. 

 He was fonder of the field than of the library, and 

 often did not, apparently, know which of his results 

 were new, and which were known before. The thing 

 of which he was proudest was that he had ne\er 

 taken the life of a native, for he had avoided hos- 

 tilities owing to his tact and infinite patience, which 

 was especially creditable to a man of such an impulsive 

 temperament. His love of peace, however, was not due to 

 any fear of war, for he was brave to recklessness. That 

 he felt warmly, and could speak impatiently, was shown 

 by his criticisms upon the management of the Emin 

 Relief Expedition. In his most famous expedition it was 

 unfortunate that he followed such a trained naturalist and 

 learned ethnographer as Fischer, and was himself followed 

 by such a laborious and skilled cartographer as von 

 Hohnel. On the other hand, this journey was the one 

 which showed Thomson's powers at their best ; for he 

 then had the fullest scope for the exercise of his tact as a 

 leader of men, his dash and daring as an explorer, his 

 enthusiasm as a sportsman, and the consummate skill 

 with which he gained the affections of his men and the 

 confidence of suspicious natives. The same qualities 

 won him respect at home. He is described, by those who 

 knew him, as singularly modest and unassuming. His 

 frank sincerity and genial humour endeared him to a wide 

 circle of friends, who devotedly cared for him in his long 

 illness, and now mourn his early death. 



J. W. Gregory. 



WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON. 



WHEN the author of this article began the work for 

 his " Einleitung in die Paheophytologie," he soon 

 realised that it was Cjuite impossible to produce such a 

 book without an accurate knowledge of Williamson's col- 

 lection of sections. He therefore wrote to Manchester and 

 requested permission to make use of the collection. An 

 invitation to Williamson's hospitable house was the 

 immediate result. He there spent eight delightful and 

 busy days, during which the host was never weary of 

 demonstrating his specimens to his guest, who was 

 astonished at their abundance, or of imparting to him the 

 fullest information from his store of knowledge. The 

 guest departed with feelings of the warmest respect and 

 gratitude. In the course of the following years, however, 

 he has often again had the privilege of returning to 

 Manchester and London, and of knitting closer the bonds 

 of reverence and friendship witli liim who is gone. The 

 last occasion was in the spring of the current year, when 

 the writer left with the conviction that it had been their 

 last meeting. Williamson's death actually took place at 

 Claphani Common, on June 23, when in his seventy-ninth 

 year. 



William Crawford Williamson was born at Scarborough, 

 on November 24, 1816. His father, John Williamson, a 

 gardener by profession, but by the bent of his mind a 

 naturalist, and especially a geologist, was a zealous 

 colleague of William .Smith, who was attached to him 

 both by friendship and by their common pursuits, and 

 who spent two whole years, 1826-182S, under his roof 



Young Williamson's father encouraged his scientific 

 tastes, even from his earliest days ; his observational 

 f.iculties were strengthened by frequent excursions ; the 

 association with .Smith, and with the circle of acti\e 

 geologists of that fruitful period, influenced his boyhood, 

 and left behind an effect which lasted his whole life. He 



NO. 1349, VOL. 52] 



has often told the writer about his geological and 

 botanical rambles with his father and friends along the 

 beautiful cliffs of the Scarborough and Whitby coasts. 

 He had an extraordmary love for his more immediate: 

 home, and was proud to call himself a Yorkshireman. 



Williamson's first publications, " On a Rare Species of 

 Mylilus" and " On the Distribution of Organic Remains 

 in the Lias Series of Yorkshire," appeared when he was 

 only in his eighteenth year, .\bout the same time he 

 also contributed a considerable number of drawings to- 

 Lindley and Hutton's " Fossil Flora of Oreat Britain," a 

 work which was completed in 1837, when he was twenty- 

 one. In his later years he did not continue to work much 

 at remains preserved as impressions, for his whole interest 

 had become diverted to anatomical studies. One or two 

 papers on Zaiiiia nigas (now called Williaiiisonia), 

 however, owe their origin to the material accumulated in 

 those youthful days. The last and most important of 

 these papers appeared in 1870, in the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society, vol. xxvi., under the title " Contributions 

 towards the History of Zainia gigas." 



Williamson's family was not much blest with this 

 world's goods. He was therefore obliged to adopt some 

 practical calling, and naturally chose the medical pro- 

 fession, for which he prepared, first at Manchester, while 

 at the same time acting as Curator of the Natural History 

 Museum there, and subsequently in London. In 1840 he 

 became member and licentiate of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons. Soon afterwards he settled in Manchester as 

 a medical man, and remained there over fifty years, 

 carrying on for a long time an extensive practice. In 

 addition to this the professorship of Geology and Natural 

 History at the Owens College was conferred on him in 

 1 85 1, an office which he administered, in its full extent, 

 for many years. In 1872, however, he handed over the 

 geology to Boyd Uawkins, and from 1880 onwards gave 

 up the zoology, and confined himself to botany. This he 

 continued to teach down to 1892, when his decreasing 

 bodily strength compelled him to retire altogether. He 

 then removed to London, in order that with the aid of 

 the greater facilities there offered he might the better 

 advance the scientific work, which he was still zealously 

 pursuing. Here, after three more years, he too soon 

 ended a life of which one may certainly say, with the 

 Psalmist, that its strength was labour and toil. 



For medical practice and jjrofessorial duties, though 

 strenuously and most conscientiously carried on, did not 

 satisfy Williamson's mighty power of work. Concurrently 

 with these occupations, a constant flow of scientific pro- 

 duction went on, the many-sidedness of which is scarcely 

 conceivable to the present generation. Not only did he 

 write articles in medical journals, which lie beyond the 

 scope of the present notice, he also continued to work 

 with the greatest zeal at zoology, botany, and, above all, 

 geology and paUeontology, as is testified by his numerous 

 publications — large and small. 



From his youth upwards, Williamson had been much 

 occupied with the investigation of fossil fishes, and in the 

 latter half of the thirties, and beginning of the forties, he 

 wrote various memoirs on this subject. His studies of 

 lower organisms gave rise to the works on Canipylo- 

 discits,^ on I'o/fox GM/a/o/;- and on Foraininifcra, the 

 last and most important of which, embracing the whole 

 of his researches on the subject, was published by the 

 Ray Society in 1858, under the title of "The British 

 Foraminifera." These writings have received due 

 acknowledgment in the works of Carpenter and Biitschli. 



In 1833 the remarkable work by Witham, of Larting- 

 ton, appeared, in which the study of the internal structure 

 of carboniferous fossil plants was entered upon for the 

 first time, vith the help of the thin ground sections 



1 " Annals of N.it. Hist." vol. i., 1848. 



- Memoirs of the Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc, vol i.\. iSj.!, and 

 Transactions of the Microscopical Soc-, vol. i., 1853. 



