i>22 Reviews — Prof. Williamson, the Yorkshire Naturalist. 

 IR, IE "V X IE "W s. 



I. — Reminiscences of a Yorkshire Naturalist. By the late 

 "William Crawford Williamson, LL.D., F.K.S., Professor of 

 Botany in Owens College, Manchester. Edited hy his Wife. 

 8vo, pp. xii and 228. (London : George Redway, 1896.) 



THIS little volume contains a record of the principal events in 

 the life of the author, written by himself, and tenderly edited 

 by Mrs. Williamson after his death. 



It falls to the lot of but few amongst us to have the events of our 

 lives set down in a book, and it may very well be doubted if such 

 records, save in a few exceptional instances, are worth the expenditure 

 of ink and paper. Professor Williamson may be looked upon as one 

 of these exceptional instances; indeed, it would be extraordinary if, 

 having attained his 79th year in the present century, and witnessed 

 some of the greatest changes brought about by scientific discovery 

 and invention, he should have failed to record many matters of vital 

 interest to the fin du siecle world of which he saw the earlier days. 



Born of humble parents, and by nature a delicate boy, young 

 Williamson's early schooldays were interrupted by long enforced 

 holidays spent delightfully upon a farm in Yorkshire. At other 

 times he went birds'-uesting or collecting insects, or he watched 

 an uncle who executed work with a lapidary's wheel, cutting agates 

 and other stones obtained along the coast. Later on he assisted his 

 father in his duties as Curator of the Scarborough Museum, and 

 made the acquaintance of that grand old man William Smith, the 

 " father of English Geology," and also of his nephew, Professor 

 Phillips, whose "Geology of the Yorkshire Coast" was young 

 Williamson's first introduction to a scientific work on the geology 

 of the country around his boyhood's home. At the age of fifteen 

 Williamson was sent to school at Bourbourg, in France ; to 

 accomplish which he incurred many trials, and his parents con- 

 siderable additional expense : when he left he had learned little 

 more of colloquial French than he had brought with him, and 

 gained no compensating advantages. Returning to London in 1832, 

 his father directed him to call upon Sir Roderick Murchison, by 

 whom he was well received, and breakfasted with that great man 

 and Lady Murchison, who was most kind to the country lad. 



After "doing the sights of London" he returned home, and was 

 forthwith apprenticed to a general practitioner in Scarborough, and 

 became in process of time what is nowadays termed iu joke a 

 " pill-box." He only remained with Mr. Weddell, of Scarborough, 

 three years, when, in September, 1835, he was permitted to resign 

 his articles, and was appointed Curator to the Museum of the 

 Manchester Natural History Society, a post which he held until 

 he was twenty-two years of age. 



In 1838 young Williamson earnestly desired to qualify himself 

 as a medical man; but for this purpose his medical studies, so long 

 neglected for Natural History work, must be taken up in earnest. 



