xviii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



due to the philosophical spirit which permeated them. They had always 

 a physiological basis, for Cunningham recognised no distinction between 

 physiological and pathological processes, whether in the animal world or in the 

 vegetable. The same catholic outlook characterised his unofficial contributions 

 to natural knowledge — the by-products of his official work and the recreations 

 of his active intellect. 



The greater proportion of Cunningham's reports and papers bear directly 

 on the cholera enquiry with which he and Lewis were originally charged, and 

 to which he gave undiminished attention throughout his official career. His 

 pathological contributions, however, include observations on fungus-disease in 

 collaboration with Lewis in 1875, and on Delhi boil and mycetoma published 

 independently in 1885 and 1895. Among questions which attracted his 

 interest as a physiologist or as a consequence of his connection with the 

 Botanic Garden were the action of snake-poison, the subject of papers in 1869, 

 1895, 1897, 1898 ; the effects of starvation on vegetable and animal tissues, 

 in 1878 ; nyctitropism and allied movements in plants, in 1882, 1888, 1895 ; 

 gaseous evolution from the flowers of Ottelia and fertilisation in the genus 

 Fiats, in 1887. Among matters where his interest is perhaps traceable to his 

 early intercourse with Berkeley and De Bary were economic studies of 

 diseases in plants, published in 1878, 1896, 1897, and biological studies of 

 parasitic Algce and Fungi in 1880, 1888, 1889, 1895. 



These papers, however, give a very inadequate idea of Cunningham's work 

 in the field of cryptogamic botany. Lor about a quarter of a century it was 

 his practice to deal, on behalf of his friend King, with the countless economic 

 references by government officers and private cultivators regarding plant 

 diseases caused by vegetable parasites. So effective was this aid that it was 

 not until Cunningham had retired that the Government of India realised the 

 need for the services of a whole-time plant-pathologist. It is interesting to 

 reflect that, thanks to Cunningham's private courtesy, they were enabled to 

 avoid an outlay of certainly not less than 18,000/. 



Cunningham's published papers, however, contain but a small proportion 

 of his observations in fields outside that within which his official work lay. 

 As a child, the harvest of the fishing craft of Prestonpans had been to him 

 an unceasing source of interest, and such satisfaction as the fishers themselves 

 could accord to his curiosity only whetted his boyish craving for further 

 information and laid the foundation of a habit of observing natural objects 

 which, during his school and undergraduate days, developed into a keen 

 addiction to the study of natural history. This taste accompanied him to 

 India and from the time of his arrival it was his practice to enter in a care- 

 fully kept series of note-books his observations of animate things. The 

 existence of these records was known to, and the notes themselves were always 

 at the service of, his more intimate friends. To these it was, therefore, a 

 source of keen satisfaction when Cunningham's health at length became 

 sufficiently restored to admit of his exercising his literary gift in rendering 

 some part of this accumulated knowledge available in an enduring form to a 



