IN MEMORIAM—THOMAS HICK, BA.,. B.SC ALS, 83 
animosities which Darwin had, in another form, first raised with his 
“Origin of Species,’ some seven years previous. Early in 1870, 
Hick along with Todd, James W. Davis, Abbott, W. Watson 
(another schoolmaster), and myself, formed ourselves into a small 
Mutual Improvement Society, meeting fortnightly at our homes in 
turn to read papers and discuss points in Science Progress, This, 
which we dignified by the name of the Leeds Scientific Association, 
was, I believe, in part the origin of the Leeds Naturalists’ Society. 
Before that, for years, the nature-students of Leeds, mainly working- 
men whom the ‘ Philosophical,’ gentlemen of the time in no way recog- 
nised, used to meet at a Hall or Museum behind the present Corn 
Exchange. Davis and Hick first met there, Todd being their 
introducer... None of the friendships there formed with Hick were, 
I think, ever broken or even strained, Hick and Davis’s characters 
being equally unjealous, earnest and sterling. For some years 
Hick was the reviewer of science books for the ‘ Leeds Mercury,’ and 
many of his trenchant and well-informed critiques are remembered 
yet, notably that on ‘As Regards Protoplasm’—a reply to Huxley’s 
“Lay Sermon,’ by Hutchison Stirling. Hick’s first original paper, 
aDdout 1880, was, I recollect, on an overlooked point in the 
morphology of Ficaria verna. It showed an unusual gift of exact 
observation, and foreshadowed the brillianey of later papers in the 
‘Journal of Botany’ on the Continuity of Protoplasm in the tissues 
of certain Marine Algee. He was too careful and self-critical 
a worker to produce voluminously ;- albeit his later researches in the 
field of Fossil Botany at Manchester, for which more credit is his 
due than any mere list of his oditer dicta, as the Aide of a rather 
jealous Chief would seem to warrant, must prove a sufficient and 
enduring monument. 
Thomas Hick was a singularly simple-minded, unaffected, trans- 
parently-honest Yorkshireman ; strangely little exalted for one with 
such a gift of brain. His lectures were always marvels of lucidity 
and arrangement. <A trifle blunt of speech and never quite losing 
his Yorkshire accent, he was respected by who listened to him, and 
loved by who knew him socially. Very matter-of-fact most people 
would have said, yet, at times, I am reminded, a vein of sentiment 
(as mayhap is the case with most of us) occasionally shewed itself 
Tunning through the Solid strata of his mental organism. If this 
seems to belie,—to be at variance with outspoken materialism, we 
may reflect that, as yet, no scientific analysis of Spirit has been made. 
This sensibility to the beauty of faith or feeling came to the surface 
at times in a moistened eye or a phrase spoken with ‘ bated’ breath, 
and unexpectedly : who shall say that whatever arouses it has vot 
March 1897, 
