140 OBITUARY. 
there present. This, assuredly, was not the case. The Lecture 
might have been adapted to the intelligence of the members of 
the Botanical Society of London, or to some similar audience ; 
but it was not well suited to the members of the scholastic pro- 
fession then and there assembled. Dilettante lectures are suitable 
enough to the members of our literary and scientific societies, 
who only wish to have an hour’s amusement—looking at chemical 
experiments or handsome diagrams, or who desire only to be 
cheated into the belief that they know something of a science, 
because they have listened to a man who could glibly, or perhaps 
eloquently, talk about it for an hour or so. But the meeting of 
schoolmasters in St. Martin’s Hall is no pastime: it is avery se- 
rious affair,__a matter of practical busmess. The audience meet 
there to hear and learn something which they might or should 
employ in their respective duties as the instructors of youth. 
We fear the Lecture was not of a sufficiently elementary character 
to meet the wants and the wishes too of the auditors. We also 
think that the directors of the Association might have had a lec- 
ture much more profitable to their constituents, if they had not 
intimated to the lecturer that his lecture would be published. An 
elementary treatise on Botany, which might be published and sold 
for a shilling, would convey more real information than any lecturer 
can in six lectures, if they are to be readable, as well as tolerable 
to an auditory. The audience at St. Martin’s should have been 
addressed precisely as the lecturer would address an audience at 
any of our medical schools, or as he addresses his pupils in his 
own private lecture-room. Such a lecture might have been pro- 
fitable to the hearers, and probably would have been so; but it 
would not have had much interest for the public. 

Obituary. 
DR. GEORGE JOHNSTON, F.R.S.E., &e. 
It is probable that very few who read the ‘ Phytologist’ are not already 
informed, from other sources, that British Botany has recently lost one of 
its most zealous, able, and successful supporters ; yet it appears to be a 
duty devolving on the conductors of this Periodical to notice this melan- 
choly event, and to pay their tribute of deference to science, and to 
the memory of the deceased. To professors of medicine generally the 
science of Botany is under great obligations: on this subject we hope to 
be able to devote an article in some future number. To north-country 
