95 
3n flDemoiiam. 
WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON, LL.D., F.R.S., &C. 
BORN 24tli NOV. 1816. DIED 23rd JUNE, 1896. 
The memoirs of the great Yorkshire Naturalist who passsd from 
us during the early summer of last year have appeared in several of 
the Scientific Journals, both at home and abroad, and have quite 
recently been so ably and fully set forth in " The Reminiscences of a 
Yorkshire Naturalist" that there remains little t) add ; but the 
Council of our Society, with whom Professor Williamson was 
connected as a highly valued honorary member, deem it fitting 
that the pages of its Proceedings should contain some record of his 
career, and bear testimony to the value of his numerous scientific 
labours which extended over the long period of sixty years. 
The subject of our story was a native of Scarborough, where he 
was born on the 24th November, 1816 ; his father, John Williamson, 
a gardener, and an ardent student of nature, came of a sturdy, self- 
reliant Yorkshire stock, and has been admirably portrayed by his son 
in a charming memoir in our Society's Proceedings for 1894 ; a 
perusal of this sketch reveals the source of that deep love of nature 
and fondness for scientific research which was undoubtedly inherited 
by the son from his father. 
In 1824 John Williamson made the acquaintance of the father 
of English Geology, William Smith, well-known to his contemporaries 
as Strata Smith, and subsequently that of his nephew the late Pro- 
fessor John Philips ; both these men were frequent visitors to Scar- 
borough, and indeed the former for some considerable time was a 
resident in the Williamson's home, and so it came about that as boy 
and youth the budding geologist expanded in an atmosphere in every 
way congenial to the development of his scientific powers. By con- 
tinuous contact with these and many other men of science who called 
upon his father he was placed in a favourable environment. His father 
