194 Eminent Living Geologists — 



His first position after leaving New College was that of Lecturer 

 on Botany in the New Veterinary College, Edinhurgh. A few 

 months later he became Assistant to the Secretary of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, and in this capacity made the acquaintance of 

 Dr. Robert Chambers, the publisher, which led later to his con- 

 tributing the geological articles to the first edition of Chambers^ 

 Encyclopcedia. William Carruthers' eaidiest scientific paper, recorded 

 in the Royal Society's Catalogue, was a geological one on the 

 Graptolites found in the rocks of liis native county (Dumfriesshire), 

 published in the Transactions of the Royal Physical Society of 

 Edinburgh. 



In 1859 he was offered, through Professor J. Hutton Balfour, the 

 post of Assistant in the Department of Botany in the British Museum, 

 and took up his duties there in August of that year, the staff of the 

 Department at that time consisting of his cliief (Mr. John Joseph 

 Bennett) and himself. He thus definitely abandoned the Church as 

 a profession, and devoted himself to science, but it was from no lack 

 of sympathy with the Church, for throughout liis life his great hobby 

 has been Church history and theological literature. 



In 1870 he was earnestly invited by Professor Asa Gray, the famous 

 American botanist, to join him at Cambridge, Mass., with a view 

 to his designating him as his successor. Mr. Carruthers was much 

 drawn by this offer, but eventually decided not to give up his post in 

 the Museum; indeed, in 1871 Mr. Bennett retired and Mr. Carruthers 

 succeeded him as Keeper of Botany. 



His first important studies in geology led liim to undertake the 

 careful investigation of the Graptolites of the Moffat Shales, and for 

 some years he devoted his special attention to this group of organisms, 

 in which Professor Lapworth, H. A. Nicholson, John Hopkinson, and 

 others also laboured. 



In the British Museum he had under his immediate charge a large 

 and valuable series of fossil plants, mostly showing structure, being 

 a part of the collection of the celebrated botanist Robert Brown, 

 the first Keeper of the Botanical Department (1827), who died in 

 London, June 10, 1858, the year before Carruthers entered the Museum. 

 He also made good use of the fossil plants preserved in the Geological 

 Department, to which he had free access. His first important paper 

 related to the fructification of Lepidodendron, material for which he 

 found in the Robert Brown Collection and in the Geological 

 Department. He not only described the fossil spore-bearing cones of 

 [a) Lepidostrohus Brownii and L. ornatus, and of (h) Flemingites gracilis, 

 but he further showed that the presence of these shed spores was 

 characteristic of, and made up entirely, a number of beds of coal as 

 the 'splint-coal', the Fordel-coal, the 'parrot', the 'cherry', and 

 cannel coals, as first noticed by Witham, Fleming, Prestwich, Morris, 

 and other early observers, and he was thus able to connect them with 

 the spore-bearing cones of Lepidodendro7i, which he figured in detail 

 and accurate!}' described (Geol. Mag., 1865, pp. 433-40, PI. XII). 



Apart from the purely systematic and descriptive papers on 

 palseobotanical subjects, of which a list is given at the end of this 

 notice, one of the most valuable and instructive contributions to fossil 



