IN MEMORIAM. — WILLIAM CRAWFORD AVILLL\MSON, LL.D., F.R.S. 97 
In 1835 the Curatoiship of the MaiichcHter Museum was 
accepted by our Yorkshire Naturalist, wlio removed from the county 
of his birth to that of his adoption, and in Manchester he laboured 
for more than half a century, first as medical man then as professor 
of Natural History and Geology, then of Biology, and lastly of 
Botany at Owen's College, where his scientific fiime increased until 
he became known as * facile princeps ' in his own special subject of 
Coal Measure Palaeobotany, not only at home but abroad in Europe, 
America, our Colonies, and wherever this science is cultivated. 
It was in 1842 that he began practice as a medical man in Man- 
chester ; for the following decade he appears to have studied and 
written upon a great variety of subjects, such as the Geological 
Strata of the Yorkshire Coast, the Rare Birds of Scarborough, the 
Limestones near Manchester, Fossil Fishes, Foraminifera, the Mud of 
the Levant, and the Origin of Coal ; about this period he commenced 
to use the microscope largely, and acquired that skill which served 
him so well in his subsequent micro studies on the minute structures 
of fossil plants. 
In 1851 he was elected Professor of Natural History and Geology 
at Owen's College. 
In 1854 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and at 
his death was then one of its oldest Fellows. The fifties and sixties 
were years of active work ; papers on scientific subjects followed each 
other in rapid succession, many public lectures were given and 
patient researches carried on. In 1858 his beautifully illustrated 
memoir on " The Recent Foraminifera of Great Britain " was issued 
by the Ray Society, In 1868 he published a paper on " The struc- 
ture of the woody zone of an undescribed form of Calamite," the 
forerunner of a long series on the minute structure of the Coal 
Measure Plants, which found their fullest expression in his magnifi- 
cent monographs " On the organization of the Fossil Plants of the 
Coal Measures," which appeared almost yearly in the Philosophical 
Transactions of the Royal Society, and indeed are a grand monument 
of his tireless zeal and consumate ability in the department of original 
palaeobotanical research, and which are known and prized wherever 
fossil botany is studied. 
