$2 IN ME MORI AM : WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON, LL.D., F.R.S. 



* 



Association to Manchester, when Dr. Williamson, bright, genial, 

 vivacious, conversed cheerfully with first one and then another of 

 his distinguished callers, amongst whom were prominent the vener- 

 able and venerated Dr. Asa Gray, the leading botanist of America, 

 Dr. DeBary, and Count Saporta. Alas ! all have since joined the 

 great majority, and he too is now with them. 



The last decade was as prolific as ever ; one after each other in 

 addition to the ' magnus opus ' which dominates all the rest, there 

 appeared papers ' On the Morphology of Pinites oblongus* (1886); 

 'On Goethe as Botanist and Geologist'; 'On the Relation of 

 Calamodendron to Calamites * ; and the grand ' Monograph of the 

 Morphology and Histology of Stigmaria ficoides' (1887); 'On 

 Some Anomalous Cells Developed Within the Interior of the Vascular 

 and Cellular Tissues of the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures ' ; 

 1 On the Fossil Trees of the Coal Measures ' (1888) ; ' On the Present 

 State of the Inquiry into the Microscopic Features of the Coal 

 of the World ' (1889). 



In 1890 the Geological Society of London awarded him the 

 Wollaston Gold Medal, the answer to which came in the shape of 

 more memoirs and papers : ' On our Present Knowledge of the 

 Vegetation of the Carboniferous Age' (1891); and 'On the 

 Mineralisation of the Minute Tissues of Animals and Plants' (1892). 

 The time had now come when Dr. Williamson began to feel the 

 need of more leisure, and so his connection of 40 years with Owens 

 College came to an end. He removed with his family to London, 

 but not to rest. The scientific fire still burned bright, and in order 

 that he might present his views in the modern terminology of a new 

 school of botany, he associated himself with Dr. Scott, F.R.S., and 

 the result was two or three more of his valuable memoirs. At the 

 request of his valued friend Graf Solms Laubach, he set himself the 

 task of providing an index to his memoirs and published his ' General 

 Morphological and Histological Index to the Author's Collective 

 Memoirs on the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures' (1891-1894). 



During his long career of scientific research, Dr. Williamson 

 accumulated, without doubt, the finest collection of micro-prepara- 

 tions of fossil plants in the world, rendered immensely valuable by 

 the rich series of type specimens which it contains, and numbering 

 nearly 3,000 specimens ; perhaps no living man knows this collection 

 nearly so w r ell as Graf Solms Laubach, and the high value he sets 

 upon it may be estimated by his confession that when he began the 

 work for his * Einleitung in die Palseophytologie, 7 he soon realised 

 that it was quite impossible to produce such a book without an 

 accurate knowledge of Williamson s collection of sections. 



Naturalist. 



