IN MEMORIAM .* WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON", LL.D., F.R.S. 27 



wards became so famous. About this time he contributed many of 

 the drawings of fossil plants which enriched the classical work of 



Lindley and Hutton, on the c Fossil Flora of Great Britain,' which 

 was published in 1837. 



In 1834, in his 18th year, appeared the first productions of his 



fertile pen : ' A Notice of the Localities, Habits, Characteristics, and 

 Synonyms of a rare British species of Mytilus'; 'On the Distribution 

 of Organic Remains in the Lias Series of Yorkshire, with a view 

 to facilitate its identification by giving the situation of the fossils' 



and ' A Description of the Tumulus lately opened at Gristhorpe, near 

 Scarborough.' 



These papers were quickly followed by others on various 

 subjects; and from this time to 1850, he appears to be preparing 

 himself by general studies for his special life-work. The literature of 

 this period deals with : — The Oolites of the Yorkshire Coast ; The 

 Appearance of Rare Birds at Scarborough; The Limestones near 

 Manchester; Undescribed Radiaria (1836); Fossil Coal Measure 

 Fishes ; W. Lancashire Carboniferous Strata ; Fossil Fish Scales (1837); 

 Fossil Fishes of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Coal Field (1839); 

 Geological Specimens from Syria ; Distribution of Organic Remains 

 from Lower Lias to Bath Oolite (1840); Fossils of Yorkshire Coast 

 from the Upper Sandstone to the Oxford Clay; The Origin of 

 Coal (1842); On Microscopical Objects, etc., from the Mud of the 

 Levant (1845); The Real Nature of the Minute Bodies in Flints(i846); 

 Recent British Species of Lagena; New British Campylodiscus 

 (1848) ; On Structure and Shell of Polystomella crispa; Microscopic 

 Structure of Ganoid and Placoid Scales and Teeth (1849) ; Structure 

 of the Calcareous Shell of some recent species of Foraminifera (1850). 

 Thus for 15 years what we may call the work of initiation went on : 

 in the use of prepared microscopic sections for the study of fossil 

 fish scales and foraminifera, and in the interest shown in Carboni- 

 ferous rocks and the origin of Coal, we have the foreshadowing of 

 the great work that was to come- 

 In 1835 the office of Curator of the Museum of the Manchester 

 Natural History Society, in Peter Street, was accepted. In 1842 he 

 began practice as a medical man in Manchester, and so the naturalist, 

 a Yorkshire man by birth, became a Lancashire man by adoption, to 

 the honour of the two great English counties who may both claim 

 him now as equally theirs. In 185 1 he was elected Professor of 

 Natural History and Geology at Owens College, and in that year he 

 published the first palaeobotanical paper, which was the forerunner of 

 those splendid memoirs on which his chief fame justly rests ; it is 

 entitled ' On the Structure and Affinities of the Plants hitherto known 



Jan. 1896. 



