73 



GEOEGE EOBEET MILNE MUEEAY. 

 (1858-1911.; 



(with portrait.) 



A NAME for many years familiar to readers of this Journal 

 has been removed from the hst of British botanists by the death 

 of George Eobert Milne Murray, which occurred at Stonehaven, 

 Kincardineshire, on the 16th of December last. 



He was born at Arbroath, Nov. 11, 1858, and educated at the 

 High School there ; after this he went to Strassburg, where he 

 studied under De Bary, and, returning to London, was towards 

 the end of 1876 appointed as junior assistant in the Department 

 of Botany in the British Museum, the whole of which was then 

 contained in the building at Bloomsbury. Here the fungi and 

 algae were placed in his charge. Those who remember the cramped 

 condition of the Department in the old building will be able to 

 contrast it with its extent at present ; those who do not may form 

 some idea of this when it is stated that the work of arranging the 

 fungi had to be carried on in a small and uncomfortable iron 

 gallery erected for the purpose. Murray had fully utilized his 

 stay at Strassburg, and his knowledge of the German language 

 and literature proved of great value, not only to the Department, 

 but also to this Journal, to which he at once became a contributor; 

 a note from his pen on the reproduction of the Ascomycetes 

 appears in the issue for March, 1877. In 1878 he was elected a 

 Fellow of the Linnean Society — this, apparently, in exception to 

 the Bye-law which states that "no person shall be capable of 

 being elected a Fellow until he shall have fully attained the age 

 of twenty-one years." In 1879 he contributed the article on Fungi 

 to vol. ix. of the Encyclopcedia Britannica ; one on Vegetable 

 Parasitism appeared in vol. xviii. (1885). 



The transference of the botanical collections to South Ken- 

 sington, 1880, was mainly conducted by Murray, who in the new 

 Museum found sufficient space for the proper arrangement of the 

 cryptogams — an occupation which naturally required much time 

 and trouble. In 1882 he was entrusted by Huxley with investi- 

 gations into the salmon disease, in connection with which he 

 published three reports, extracts from which will be found in this 

 Journal for 1885, pp. 302-308; the "potato fungus" had previ- 

 ously engaged his attention. In this year he became lecturer of 

 botany at St. George's Hospital Medical School — a post which he 

 held for four years. 



From this time onward Murray's work was practically confined 

 to Marine Algae. In 1887 he published (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.) a 

 catalogue of the Ceylon Algae in the British Museum, and in 

 1888-9 printed in this Journal a list of West Indian Algae, largely 

 based on the Museum collections and on his own observations 

 during tiie Solar Eclipse expedition in 1886, to which he was 

 attached. In 1889 he pubHshed, in conjunction with A. W. 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 50. [March, 1912.] g 



