X1V Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 
partnership is beneficial. The problem is to trace the process by which one 
partner gets the upper hand and becomes merely predatory. Ward inherited 
a strong taste for music, though I believe he never cultivated it. A musical 
simile may not inappropriately be applied to his work. In its whole it 
presents itself to me as a symphony in which the education of protoplasm is 
a recurring lett-moti. 
A few words must be said as to his personal caAnaetnientce He had all the 
qualifications for the kind of research to which he devoted himself. -He was 
singularly dexterous and skilful in manipulation. He was a refined and accom- 
plished draughtsman, and was therefore able to do himself justice by 
illustration. He was rigorous in demanding exhaustive proof. This almost 
deteriorated into a defect. He would pursue every side issue which presented 
itself in a research, and was quite content if it led to nothing. He would 
say in such a case: “I will not leave a stone unturned.” He was apt, too, I 
think, to attack a problem in too generalised a form. In his nitrogen work 
it always seemed to me that he wasted energy on remote possibilities, when a 
clean-cut line of attack would have served him better. But his mind worked 
in that way, and he could not help himself. It was, I think, one of the 
most fertile in suggestion that I ever came across. In later years, in con- 
versation especially, thought seemed to come quicker than words to express 
it. In this respect he reminded one of Lord Kelvin. In such a predica- 
ment he would simply remain silent, and slowly move his head. This habit, 
I think, explains the reputation of being “mysterious” which he seems to 
have acquired latterly at Cambridge. 
He was not without the honour at home which he deserved, apart from 
the affection of his friends, and had he lived would doubtless have received 
it from abroad. He was elected F.RS. in 1888, and received the Royal 
Medal in 1893. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Christ’s College in 
1897, and received an Honorary D.Sc. from the Victoria University in 1902. 
Botanical science could ill spare his loss at the early age of 52. But 
it may be grateful for 25 years of illuminating achievement. It might 
have been hoped that another quarter of a century would be allotted to one 
so gifted. But if the “inexorabile fatum ” decreed otherwise, he is at least to 
be numbered amongst those of whom it may be said 
“Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.” 
W. T. TD" 
