xlviii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



This was David Eobertson, "the ISTaturalisfc of , Cumbrae," who, with abso- 

 lutely no initial advantages, had become a successful man of business, an 

 ardent zoologist, and an exceptionally acute observer of marine life. "When 

 the work appeared, to which he had given unstinted (though not literary) 

 service, his name was missing from the title-page. Notwithstanding his 

 genial and modest temperament, the disappointment was perhaps never quite 

 cured, though substantially solaced later on when the University of Glasgow 

 made him an honorary Doctor of Laws. Generally, Norman was ready 

 ■enough to give praise where it was due, as when he denominated the 

 Norwegian Prof. G. 0. Sars " the prince of carcinologists." 



Among the distinctions which Norman himself held, it may be noticed that 

 he received from the Institute of France the medal struck in honour of the 

 exploring expeditions by the " Talisman " and the " Travailleur " in the Bay of 

 Biscay. These he had joined by the invitation of the French Government, and 

 his varied knowledge of oceanic species made his presence on board those 

 vessels in the highest degree acceptable. When, in 1906, the gold medal of 

 the Linnean Society was awarded him, the President, Prof. Herdman, gave an 

 ample summary of the medallist's services to science, which is on record in 

 ithe ' Proceedings ' of that Society, and need scarcely be repeated here. It 

 may, however, be noted that it begins with the year 1851, when at the age 

 of twenty Norman published an account of the Mollusca of Oxfordshire. 

 Years afterwards it was pleasant to find him President of the Oonchological 

 Society, and, while sharing his hospitality to the members, to join them in 

 admiring and examining his noble conchological collection. Besides taking 

 •an active part in describing the results obtained by various exploring vessels, 

 Norman was of essential service to Wyville Thomson and John Murray in 

 their business of selecting the army of workers by whom the gigantic Keport 

 •on the " Challenger " expedition was in twelve years completed. His dealing 

 with the fourth volume of the ' Monograph of the British Spongiadee ' was a 

 very unselfish affair, from a scientific point of view, which he thus explains, 

 " In editing this posthumous volume of his valued friend, his aim has been 

 .simply to leave it as Dr. Bowerbank's work. To have attempted to indicate 

 his own (Norman's) views would have been to remodel the whole, and the 

 species would have had to be thrown into more numerous genera, defined on 

 different principles, while, on the other hand, the number of so-called species 

 would have been considerably reduced." Incidentally, the same preface 

 ■observes that " a large number of the localities, to which the editor's initial 

 is attached, will be found to be situated in the counties of Galway and Mayo, 

 where a remarkably fine collection of sponges was obtained during a 

 .scientific expedition which Mr. D. Eobertson, of Glasgow [and Cumbrae], and 

 himself made to that part of Ireland in the summer of 1874." 



Tributes to Norman's diversified knowledge are given by the competition 

 for the use of his name in generic terminology. This was started by his 

 friend Prof. G. S. Brady, who in 1866 named a genus of the Ostracoda 

 Jim-mania. This, however, a little while before had been named Loxoconcha 



