56 NATURAL HISTOEY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



result proved that it could not be regarded as sulphur. Under the micro- 

 scope it presented the appearance of agglutinated masses, composed of 

 spherical particles, sometimes containing only two or three, and some- 

 times a score of single particles. 



Mr. Duke, and others, imagined the yellow dust to be composed of 

 insects' eggs. 



Mr. Porte suggested that this yellow dust might, on examination, 

 prove to be the pollen of fir trees.* 



The President, with great regret, announced the death of an 

 esteemed and distinguished botanist, Dr. Robert Kaye Greville, and read 

 the following extract from M'Kenzie's "Dictionary of Universal Bio- 

 graphy :" — 



" Robert Kaye Greville, a distinguished naturalist and botanist, was 

 born on the 13th of December, 1794, at Bishop Auckland, in the county 

 of Durham. He began to study plants before he knew that any book 

 was written on the subject ; and before he was nineteen he had made 

 careful coloured drawings of between one and two hundred native 

 plants. He was intended for the medical profession, and accordingly he 

 passed through the usu al curriculum of four years in London and Edin- 

 burgh; but circumstances having rendered him independent of the practice 

 of the profession, and, above all, natural history having taken too deep root 

 in his heart, he did not go up for his degree, but devotedhimself to botany. 

 In 1824 the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by the Univer- 

 sity of Glasgow. He delivered several courses of popular lectures on bo- 

 tany, and made extensive collections of plants, insects, shells, and 

 marine Crustacea. Advancing age led to a less exclusive devotion to 

 the subject, and to the disposal of his phanerogamous herbarium and 

 ferns, as well as his collection of insects, to the University of Edinburgh. 

 At the same time a change of circumstances led him to take up land- 

 scape painting as a profession. He still, however, continued to prose- 

 cute natural history, and devoted much attentiontotheDiatomacese, and 

 to his general collection of land and fresh-water Mollusca, which is the 

 finest in Scotland. . . . He was a fellow of the Royal So- 

 ciety of Edinburgh, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy ; 

 a Member of the Imperial Academy Naturae Curiosorum, and of 

 the Natural History Society of Leipsic; Honorary Secretary of the 

 Botanical Society of Edinburgh ; Corresponding Member of the Natural 

 History Societies of Paris, Cherbourg, Brussels, Philadelphia, &c. 

 Among his works may be mentioned the following : — ' Flora Edinensis,' 

 ' Scottish Cryptogamic Elora,' ' Algae Britannicas,' ' Icones Filicum,' 

 in conjunction with Sir W. J. Hooker, besides numerous papers on 

 Perns, Algse, Mosses, and Diatoms, in various scientific journals." 



This veteran botanist died at his residence near Edinburgh on the 4th 



* On subsequent microscopic examination, this proved to be the case. There is thus 

 here placed on record an interesting fact — the proportion of sulphur in the pollen of fir. 



