Richard Lydekker. 



in 



was invited to deliver some address. He was a forcible and sententious 

 speaker. 



He was a skilful draughtsman and an etcher of considerable artistic merit. 

 He was also an expert shorthand writer, and was the founder of the Society 

 of Medical Phonographers, to the pages of whose journal he was a frequent 

 contributor. He had no active recreations, but in his holidays spent a good 

 deal of his time in etching, and in the study of mosses, of which he had an 

 extensive knowledge. 



Sir William Gowers married the daughter of Frederick Baines, of Leeds, in 

 1875. She predeceased him in 1913. Two sons and two daughters survive 

 their parents. The death of Sir William Gowers removes from the roll of the 

 Eoyal Society one of the most eminent of the physicians who have attained 

 this honour. 



D. F. 



EICHAED LYDEKKEK (1849—1915). 



Eichaed Lydekker was born on July 25, 1849, at 45, Tavistock Square, 

 London, the eldest son of Mr. Gerard Wolfe Lydekker, barrister-at-law, who 

 shortly after his son's birth purchased Harpenden Lodge, Harpenden, where 

 Eichard lived practically for his whole life, and where he died on April 16, 

 1915. The family was of Dutch extraction, but had been domiciled in this 

 country and connected with Hertfordshire for several generations, Lydekker's 

 father having been a magistrate in that county, and his grandfather, after 

 being Governor of Martinique, having lived and died at St. Albans. 



Lydekker entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1867, gained second 

 place in the First Class Natural Science Tripos, and took his B.A. in 1872. 

 Two years afterwards he was appointed to the Geological Survey of India, in 

 whose service he remained until the death of his father in 1881. While in 

 India he explored very systematically the mountain ranges of Kashmir, and 

 gained a knowledge of the geography of that complicated region which was 

 afterwards of much use to him in his zoological work, and when the 

 Survey collections in Calcutta were transferred to the newly built Indian 

 Museum, his keen biological bent found scope in the arrangement and 

 description of the series of tertiary vertebrate fossils, to which large additions 

 had recently come from the Punjab. A permanent record of his work at 

 that time remains in his contributions on the Siwalik fauna in the 

 ' Palseontologia Indica.' 



He returned home to England in 1882 after his succession to the family 

 home at Harpenden, where he took up his father's magisterial work in the 



