384 Obituary— Prof. W. C. WMamson, F.E.S. 



culminating, in 1848, in the publication, by the Eay Society, of his 

 "Monograph on the Recent Foraminifera of Great Britain," and in 

 a memoir on the minute organisms found in the marine mud of the 

 Levant. This latter memoir contained the first announcement of 

 the existence in some of the deeper seas of what is now known as 

 the Foraminiferal Ooze. The study of some histological features 

 of human bones and teeth led to an examination of the scales and 

 bones of recent and fossil fishes. Two memoirs on these subjects 

 were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Eoyal 

 Society, in which he announced his conclusion that the scales and 

 dermal teeth of fishes were the liomologues of the oral teeth of the 

 mammalia, the latter being but the relics of the dermal system so 

 extensively developed in fiJies. The publication of these two 

 memoirs led to his election as a F.E.S. in 1854. In 1851 the 

 Owens College of Manchester began its career, when Mr. Williamson 

 was elected its first Professor of Biology and Geology. As the 

 institution expanded, this too-comprehensive chair was divided, and 

 for many years past his academic labours had been confined to the 

 Professorship of Botany. Circumstances then drew his attention to 

 the Carboniferous plants of Lancashire and Yorkshii-e. The result 

 of these later studies has been the publication, in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, of seventeen memoirs " On the Organization of the 

 Fossil Plants of the Coal-measures." On receiving the sixth of 

 this series, the Eoyal Society recognized them by awarding him 

 their Eoyal Medal. The Wollaston Gold Medal of the Geological 

 Society was awarded to Dr. Williamson in 1890. Dr. Williamson 

 was President, and subsequently senior Vice-President, of the 

 Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. The LTniversity 

 of Edinburgh conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. The 

 Gottingen Academy of Sciences elected him one of its foreign 

 members, and the Royal Society of Sweden elected him to the 

 place left vacant by the death of Professor Asa Gray. 



In the Eoyal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers from 1834 to 

 1873 is a list of 57 papers, principally upon microscopic organisms, 

 Foraminifera, Eadiolaria, etc. ; on the microscopic structure of the 

 scales, bones, and teeth of Fossil Fishes and Reptiles, and a most 

 important series on the structure of coal-plants, Calamites, Stigmaria, 

 Siyillnria, Lepidodendron, etc., with which his name will for ever 

 remain honourably associated. 



Prof. Williamson had retired from the Owens College, Manchester, 

 for some time before his death, and had been residing at Clapham, 

 where he had occupied himself with Dr. D. H. Scott, F.E.S., 

 Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory, Kew, in carrying on his 

 researches in the microscopic structure of Fossil Plants, to illustrate 

 which he had accumulated an immense and valuable series of 

 microscopical sections and specimens. 



Prof. Williamson having passed so many years of his life in 

 Manchester had never become a Fellow of the Geological Society 

 of London, although he was the recipient of its Wollaston Medal in 

 1890. He died at the age of 78 years, having been actively engaged 

 up to a short time before his death. 



