394 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



of affairs, frank, genial, wide of view, with a taste, I had 

 almost said a greed, for details, untiring zeal, and a patience 

 which trial only strengthened. The Society has been singu- 

 larly fortunate in its secretaries. Three names stand out in 

 its recent annals — Wyville Thomson, John Alexander 

 Smith, and Kobert Gray, each of whom devoted much time, 

 excellent business talent, and varied attainments as natur- 

 alists to the interests of the Society. All were enthusiastic 

 men of science ; each, however, had his specialty, but each 

 was free from the narrowness and very limited outlook 

 which are so often the accompaniment of mere specialism, 

 because each had learned, that all the things in the great 

 field where their specialty had found them, are more or 

 less closely related. Thus their wide sympathy with, and 

 their intelligent interest in, workers of all sorts in these 

 departments which chiefly occupy the attention of this 

 Society. Themselves unselfish, earnest workers, they could 

 rightly appreciate painstaking industry, and unflagging effort, 

 «ven in those whose happiness almost seemed to lie in going 

 out of their way to let the Secretary know that they had 

 little respect for his phase of observation and research. 



Mr Gray was born, and as a boy was educated, at Dunbar. 

 He early entered the service of the City of Glasgow Bank, 

 which, after a time, he left for that of the Bank of Scotland, 

 in whose head-office at Edinburgh he was cashier at the 

 time of his death. As a man of business, I have it on the 

 report of friends who were well qualified and had good 

 opportunities to judge, he was noted for his shrewdness, 

 knowledge of character, sound judgment, and practical 

 sagacity, qualities by which this Society benefited much. 

 He loved literature, and readily entered into aspects of 

 thought lying far outside of his work in the Bank, and even 

 of that branch of natural history which was his specialty. 

 He was a lover of books, and had just so much of a book 

 collector's hunger after rare works in science, or in the 

 literature of subjects having relations to science, as to take 

 the trouble of watching for their turning up, in circumstances 

 in which he escaped the temptation and the folly of paying 

 large sums for books whose chief value lies in their rarity. 



