75 
RALPH TATE 
(1840-1901). 
Raupa Tate was born at Alnwick in 1840. When only twelve 
years old he began the study of geology at the instigation of his 
uncle George Tate, the author of the ‘ Fossil Flora of the Eastern 
roads.” At the age of seventeen he obtained an exhibition of 
£80 at the School of Mines; after this he became a science teacher 
and lecturer under the Department of Science and Art, in which 
capacity he went to Belfast. Here he conducted classes in various 
branches of natural science with marked suecess, and in 1868 took 
a leading part in establishing the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, 
for the benefit of whose members he published, in 1868, his Flora 
Belfastiensis. This was ‘ hastily prepared,” and “ does not profess 
to be exhaustive; it is, however, original, and, notwithstanding 
several errors, it was a step in advance.”* In 1865 he spent four 
summer weeks in Shetland, and published the botanical results of 
his researches in this Journal for 1866, pp. 2-15; he distributed 
sets of his plants, the first of which is in the National Herbarium. 
Some corrections of nomenclature by H. C. Watson and Mr. Car- 
ruthers will be found on pp. 848-51. In the same volume (p. 377) 
Tate proposed a ‘* new variety” of Andromeda Polifolia, which he 
called curta, from the short peduncles; this, though based on an 
rish plant, is not referred to in Cybele Hibernica, on the first 
edition of which Tate published some notes in this Journal for 
1870 (p. 80). se 
In 1867 Tate visited Venezuela and Nicaragua as a mining 
expert; during this period he devoted his attention chiefly to 
England he became director of some mining schools in Durham. 
In 1875 he was appointed Elder Professor of Natural Science at 
the Adelaide University, a position which he occupied until his 
death on the 20th of last September. Here he at once took up a 
leading position. He was first President of the Biological Section of 
the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science formed 
in 1888, and delivered before it an able address on “The Influence 
charge by the South Australian Government; among the plants 
collected by him in Arnhem’s Land in 1882 was the Verbenaceous 
genus Tatea, named in his honour by F. von Mueller; and he is 
also commemorated in the names of several species. In 1890 Tate 
ee eee 
* Preface to Flora of North-East of Ireland (p. xxii), by Mr. S. A. Stewart, 
Whose help is acknowledged by Tate in the Flora Belfastiensis. 
