248 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
James Morrison Crompre, who died at Ewhurst, Surrey, on 
May 12, was born at Aberdeen on April 20, 1833.* At the age of 
fifteen he entered the Marischal College, Aberdeen, where, as_sub- 
sequently at Edinburgh University (where he graduated M.A), he 
had a distinguished career. He early gave attention to natural 
history, and Prof. William 7 ae ay, his ‘first instructor in 
natural science,” said: ‘‘ He will distinguish himself as a bota nist.” 
In 1858 he was licensed in Edinburgh in the Established Church 
of Scotland, of which he was  oeaatags minister in 1862. uring 
was then at the height of his notoriety; afterwards he went to 
Swallow Street Presbyterian Church, of which he was minister 
until 1879; he had previously become clerk to the Scottish Synod 
in England i in connection with the Church of Scotland, a post which 
he was compelled by ill-health to resign in 1903. Crombie became 
a visitor to the Department of Botany in 1869, in which year he 
saabliched in this Journal his first paper on lichens—new species 
collected by himself in 1865-8, and described by Nylander in Flora. 
re a cima amt Crombie was dominated by Nylander, and, like 
unflinchin ng opponent of the Schwendenerian hypothesis of 
‘iis Sey constitution of lichens; ee n this hypothesis Crombie 
made three or four onslaughts, one of them in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica (1882). For many years he was a frequent visitor to the 
of high the first volume. was pitied in 1894 ; “of the second 
an Crombie had previously issued (in 1870) Lichenes Britannict, 
numeration, with notes in Latin of habitats and e es, of the 
Tiebeias of the United Kingdom. Between 1869 and 1893 Crombie 
published a large number of papers, mostly in this Sota Grevillea, 
and the Journal of the Linnean Society. Most of these were concerne 
with British lichens, but he also ome perso from Kerguelen 
He published two centuries of exsiccata of British lichens (1874, 
1877), and prepared for the National Herbarium a very beautiful 
series of ‘‘t ’ specimens. During his lifetime a large portion of 
h 
Honorary Fellows of the Royal Historical Society. He was Lecturer 
on Botany at St. Mary’s Hospital from 1879 to 1886. 
* There some uncertainty as to this date, pag hairs 
wrote if in a book of antographa: on his eofin the year is given as 1830. 
