August io, 19 i6] 



NATURE 



4»5 



use of which he had learnt to push far beyond the 

 limits of ordinary expectation, and was the subject 

 of more than one scientific communication. 



Such was the happy physical endowment at the 

 command of the eager and affectionate spirit 

 which, wherever he went, made William Ramsay 

 so extraordinarily lovable and acceptable to all 

 classes of men. A man so harmoniously consti- 

 tuted is not often met, and there have been many 

 moments when, watching my friend in the midst 

 of his ideally happy family surroundings, I have 

 said to myself that I have never seen an expres- 

 sion so beautiful and radiant on any human coun- 

 tenance. " Radiant energy " is the phrase that 

 best recalls and summarises his personal charac- 

 teristics. 



No accession of honours or acclamation sp>oilt 

 for one moment the childlike simplicity of his 

 character. Of course he enjoyed them, but that his 

 friends should rejoice seemed what he cared for 

 most. They brought him new and enlarged inter- 

 course, but the old channels of quiet and tried 

 affection ran deep and full as ever; discussion was 

 as free, as patient, and as fruitful. Genius of any 

 kind he always disclaimed. " It is all pure luck 

 and pegging away," was his phrase; or, as he 

 insisted when revisiting the Scientific Club at the 

 Bristol University, which he had helped to found 

 twenty-one years before, his chief asset in any 

 success he had attained had been a " shocking bad 

 memor\'," which prevented his recollecting a 

 chemical or physical fact of which he had been 

 told or had merely read, till he had forced himself 

 to rediscover it in some phenomenon within his 

 own experience. Then, indeed, he admitted that he 

 never forgot it. It was, I think, a similarity of 

 instinct for learning by an experimental appeal 

 in which physical sensation should be involved 

 that first drew us together. 



Any mistakes he made were those inevitable to 

 an eager and impetuous temperament. Always 

 grateful for help, he sometimes over-estimated the 

 abilities of the friend who gave it. Accustomed 

 to find difficulties yield to his own labour and 

 ingenuity, his sanguine expectation sometimes 

 blinded him to obstacles which were destined to 

 prove insurmountable. Unsuspicious and always 

 approachable, and a little impatient of the limita- 

 tions of scientific orthodoxy, he found that he had 

 sometimes lent too ready an ear to representations 

 that were to prove untrustworthy ; but, being 

 willing to follow ten false clues father than miss 

 one real one, he was ever more afraid of the con- 

 sequences of over-caution than of over-confidence. 



So wide were his sympathies and interests and 

 so quick his ability to take in new ideas or follow 

 a subtle argument that men of every profession 

 and workers in eveVy branch of science found 

 in him an ideal listener, and were stimu- 

 lated by his quick grasp and pertinent and 

 suggestive inquiries, and so it came to pass, 

 as it seemed to us who watched him from the 

 ranks, that he moved among the leaders of 

 thought in any sphere and in any country, recog- 

 nised as intellectually their peer, while behind all 

 his questionings burned continually the passionate 

 NO. 2441. VOL. Q7l 



desire to help to unravel the mystery of life and 

 the significance of the physical universe. " Most 

 men," he once lamented to me, "have no interest 

 in physical facts of Nature. They pretend interest 

 because they cannot igncwe the palpable results of 

 applying science, but the things in themselves are 

 I absolutely without interest for them." How this 

 interest might be aroused by education was a 

 matter that he was always ready to discuss. 



Of all his most intimate friends who had 

 already passed away, none was more deeply 

 mourned by him than G. F. Fitzgerald, whose 

 suggestion and counsel were ever at his disposal. 

 Par nobile fratrum ! let us always remember them 

 together. A. M. Worthixgton. 



ROLAND TRIM EX, F.R.S. 



"pOLAND TRLMEN, the third son of Richard 

 -'-^ and Marianne Esther Trimen, of 3 Park Place 

 \'illas, Paddington, w-as bom on October 29, 1840. 

 He was educated at King's College School, which 

 he entered in 1853, having previously been a pupil 

 at a private school at Rottingdean. When about 

 eighteen he took the voyage to Capetown for the 

 benefit of his health, returning to England in 

 1859. In the following year he again sailed to 

 Capetown and entered the Cape Civil Service. 

 In 1872 he was appointed Curator of the South 

 African Museum in succession to E. L. Layard. 

 In 1881 he was appointed sole commissioner to 

 the Phylloxera Congress at Bordeaux, and in 1886 

 a member of the Commission for extirpating 

 this pest from the Cape vineyards. In 1892 

 he became a member of the Cape Fisheries Com- 

 mission. 



In 1883 he married Miss Blanche BuD. 

 In 1895 Trimen was compelled by the state of 

 his health to resign the curatorship of the Caf>e- 

 town Museum and return to England. He be- 

 came a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1883, and 

 was awarded the Darwin medal in 1910. The 

 general feeling of naturalists when this award 

 became known was well expressed in the letter of 

 congratulation sent by the Entomological Society 

 of London to their past president of 1897-98 : — 



"Among living naturalists there are few indeed 

 whose merits as associates and fellow-workers 

 with Darwin can bear comparison with your own ; 

 and we feel sure that all alike, in rejoicing at this 

 puWic recognition of your life-long services to 

 biological science, will agree that the present 

 honour could not have been more worthily be- 

 stowed." 



Trimen contributed the third of the three great 



papers which laid the foundations of the study of 



insect mimicry, and were published by the Linnean 



Society in 1862, 1865, and 1869. The dates of 



the two latter are generally quoted as 1866 and 



1870, the years of the volumes of transactions; 



but the papers were published in the parts issued 



in the previous years. The first, by Bates, dealt 



with the Lepidopterous fauna of the Amazon valley ; 



* the second, by Wallace, with that of the East ; while 



j Trimen completed the survey by extending it to 



' Africa. In this he had perhaps the hardest task 



