121 
WILLIAM HADDEN BEEBY. 
(1849—1910.) 
(WITH PORTRAIT.) 
Tue only son of William iain and Elizabeth Beeby, the 
subject of this memoir was on June 9th, 1849. Leaving 
school ve g, for som eae worked with an uncle ; 
then he served under the Union Discount Company of London, 
and afterwards became cashier in of Tar an 
London, retiring last June oi ore ut = vente before his 
dea 910 he ctoris, 
caused by overstraining his he ne pore biotanizing in Shetland ; 
and m enly, being due neurism he aorta 
im. 
one ti a ee first-class pert on the 
on a flyi at Wither ay my wife’s enquiry 
whether he Soleniol the working of a compound micro- 
scope which she had recently to ! Mr. Arthur 
nnet s:—‘ He was the — careful gore botanist 
that I ever knew. spar o pains and t get at the 
ruth ; even ordinary plants were atsined with the microscope.” 
This opinion n most cordially endorse. Having known almost 
all our leading botanists duri last quarter of a century— 
several of them much more intimately than I knew him—I can 
say that he idcght me more than any other of the many friends 
who have kindly helped 8 towards a knowledge of our critical 
plants. Before he became so much tied by official duties, he was 
an ardent sportsman; he always keenly apres wild life, and 
in his prime thought eat: of wading knee-deep in lakes or 
or many hours. A somewhat shy, reserved man (though 
this tendency was not conspicuous in his correspondence), he was 
mainly known to other workers by his published papers; in 
he once told eee that he much preferred solitary expeditions. 
My acquaintance with him goes back to 1884, when he was 
bachelor lodgings at 14, Ridinghouse Street. “Although a grea 
many letters passed between us, we had not met for abou ‘ 
me 
merse’ 
next summer, but this was not to be. -Himself scrupulously 
accurate, he was impatient of Menger or slipshod statements, 
or pretension in others; and his strictures were sometimes too 
bluntly expressed. With the sweeping and shifting « s 
in ee inc ssaeer y dislike, he was not 
in sympathy; for —— he considered that the Vienna legis- 
lation was largely ultra vires, and he. y objected to the 
insistence on jin desert which ly on capable 
JournaL or Borany. —Vor.. 48. [May, 1910.] x 
