OBITUAEIES 
73 
OBITUARIES 
Sir George Chester (1886-1949) was a member of this Society from 
1913 to about 1927 and contributed parcels to the Exchange Club in six 
of the first seven years of liis membership. He supplied a very large 
number of records to Druce’s Flora of Northamptonshire, including 
various Ittihi. A prominent member of the Trades Union Congress and 
chairman of their Economic Committee, he was knighted in 1948, and 
became a Director of the Bank of England in March 1949 some six 
weeks before his death. His most active botanical work w'as done be- 
tween 1908 and 1930 while he was Secretary of the Kettering and Dis- 
trict Naturalists Society. Political activities made ever increasing de- 
mands on his time during the later years of his life. 
J. E. Lousley. 
Lt.-Coe. G. a. R. Watts (1873-1949), a retired officer of the Indian 
Cavalr.v, died at Fleet, Hampshire, on November 9, 1949. He contri- 
buted many records to Fraser and Keble Martin’s Flora of Devon, and 
was particularly active in investigating the south-western counties while 
he lived at Tiverton, and later the country round his home at Fleet. 
Watts took specimens of most of his finds and sent them to the Natural 
History Museum, Kew, and to specialists to be named or confirmed, but 
he did not form a herbarium of his own. He wrote up each day’s work 
in detail in diary form and also wrote descriptions of each new plant 
found in another .series of note-books. These, and the diaries (wdiich are 
incomplete), have been deposited at the Natural History Museum 
through the kindness of his widow. She also sent me a book containing 
some pressed specimens, most of which were unlocalised. He lived in 
Switzerland at Chateau d’Oex from December 1921 to September 1923, 
and his note-books recording 753 species make particularly interesting 
reading, while a stay at Diano Marina and Tenda, Italy, in May 1934, 
provides 427 species. Although most of his best work was done alone, 
his quiet dignity made him an always popular member of botanical 
gatherings and his presence will be missed at meetings of this Society, 
which he joined in 1927. 
J. E. Louseey. 
