Obituary — James Thomson, F.G.S. 479 



the award of the gold medal of the Societe Geographique de France. 

 Of minor papers on zoological and pala^ontological subjects contributed 

 to various scientific journals and the proceedings of different learned 

 societies, he must be credited with upwards of one hundred and 

 fifty, dealing with nearly every group of the animal kingdom. 



This busy and useful life was brought to a close after a short 

 illness on 21st April, 1900. Alphonse Milne-Edwards will be as 

 sincerely mourned by us as by his own countrymen, for the man 

 of science belono-s to the world. 



JAMES THOMSON, F.G.S. 

 Born Dechmber 18, 1823. Died May 14, 1900. 



It is well known that the natural taste or instinct of observing 

 and trying to explain the manifold phenomena of Nature, animate 

 and inanimate, is strongly developed in many individuals ; and 

 that, in spite of great and various difficulties, it has produced good 

 results to the scientist in particular and to society in general. 



The late Mr. James Thomson, of Glasgow, was a notable example 

 of the energy and persistence in the line of research that he chose to 

 follow, in the long uphill struggle of hard work against penury and 

 family misfortune. Snatching a few hours from early morning 

 sleep, he got a little schooling ; and this was all the basis he had for 

 a scanty education. His strong self-reliance helped him much in 

 after-life, but became inseparable from his self-opinionatedess, when 

 advised by the Editors of the Scientific Journals in which the 

 results of his workings on the structure of corals were published. 

 Not fully appreciating grammatical accuracy, and sadly wanting 

 in a knowledge of Latin, which language naturalists use for genera 

 and species, his mistaken obstinacy led to disagreements and 

 disappointments between him and his willing literary helpers in 

 Glasgow and London. For some years he had taken up the study 

 of the fossil corals abounding in the Carboniferous Limestone of 

 Western Scotland ; indeed, in his native town he had noticed, when 

 a boy, these fossils in the " Bed of Kilmarnock Water." Ultimately, 

 a goodly set of memoirs wei'e produced (upwards of twenty before 

 1883, and others since), enriched with illustrations of the peculiar 

 structures of the several kinds of corals described therein. Of these 

 illustrations, very many were delicate outlines produced by a process 

 kept secret by Mr. Thomson, who (like Dr. J. A. E. Hunter-Selkirk, 

 of Braid wood), having a small water-power at hand, applied it to 

 cutting and slicing of thousands of Carboniferous fossils. To the 

 polished surfaces of the corals, Mr. Thomson probably applied such 

 a solvent as removed the matrix, but left the organic tissue of walls 

 and septa sufficiently prominent to serve for impressions and 

 printings, and for transference to copper-plates and lithographs. 

 His last two papers on the Scotch Carboniferous Corals in the 

 Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow (vol. xi, pt. 1, 

 1897) are especially illustrated by this process. 



Mr. Thomson had a good general knowledge of geology, and his 

 natural acumen in that research was shown in his account of the 



