4 
il/?’.  WilluDu  Carruthers. 
pul)lication  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Linnean  Society  helped 
to  secure  for  him  the  coveted  distinction  of  the  Fellowship  of 
the  Royal  Society  in  1871.  At  this  time  he  began  his  work 
for  the  Royal  Agricultural  Society.  He  himself  gives  an 
interesting  summary  of  that  work  in  the  pages  which  follow 
this  notice,  so  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  more  of  it  here,  save  to 
emphasise  the  fact  that  he  was  absolutely  a pioneer  in  this 
work  in  England. 
Immediately  after  his  appointment  as  Keeper  of  Botany  the 
very  existence  of  his  Department  was  threatened  ; but  his 
evidence  before  the  Royal  Commission  on  Scientific  Instruc- 
tion made  so  clear  a case  for  the  existence  of  the  botanical 
collections  alongside  the  other  natural  history  collections,  and 
showed  so  excellent  a record  for  the  Department,  as  to  fully 
justify  and  firmly  secure  its  continuance.  In  all  the  Depart- 
ments of  the  British  Museum,  and  in  none  more  than  that  of 
Botany,  want  of  space  was  seriously  hampering  the  work,  and 
when  the  removal  to  South  Kensington  was  accomplished  in 
1 880  the  work  of-  rearranging  both  the  public  exhibits  and 
the  collections  for  the  use  of  students  owed  much  to  Mr. 
Carruthers’  talent  for  organisation.  In  the  labelling  of  the 
public  collections,  moreover,  he  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the 
system  of  giving  adequate  explanations  on  the  labels,  thus 
making  the  collections  far  more  interesting  and  instructive  to 
the  person  of  average  education.  The  removal  to  South 
Kensington  necessitated  the  formation  of  a departmental 
library,  and  for  some  years  Mr.  Carruthers  was  very  busy 
at  this  work.  He  ultimately  had  cause  to  be  proud  of  having 
got  together  the  finest  botanical  library  in  the  world,  and  at 
the  date  of  his  retiremeirt  in  1895  his  knowledge  of  the 
literature  of  botany  was  probably  unsurpassed. 
In  1884  he  took  a long  trip  in  America  (in  company  with 
the  late  Mr.  Charles  de  Laune  Faunce  de  Laune  and  Mr. 
F.  S.  W.  Cornwallis),  in  the  course  of  which  he  secured 
interesting  specimens  for  his  department,  and  got  into  closer 
touch  with  museums  and  herbaria  on  the  American  continent. 
He  and  his  fellow  travellers  also  gathered  much  valuable 
experience  in  agricultural  botany  on  this  trip. 
In  1886  he  was  President  of  the  Biological  Section  of  the 
British  Association,  at  its  Birmingham  meeting,  and  there 
delivered  an  address  on  the  persistence  of  specific  characters  in 
plants,  which  presented  so  difficult  a problem  to  the  sup- 
porters of  the  Darwinian  theory  that  it  remains  unanswered 
to  this  day. 
In  1887  he  was  chosen  to  be  President  of  the  Linnean 
Society,  for  the  period  in  which  its  centenary  celebrations 
would  fall  ; and  for  organising  and  carrying  throirgh  these 
