1898 - 99 .] 
Meetings of the Society. 
717 
portance. Fishes or Fish-Remains had not previously been 
recorded from the Silurian Rocks of Scotland, hut the officers of 
the Geological Survey had, during the past season, brought to- 
gether a large collection of well-preserved fossil fishes from rocks 
of the Silurian age in the Lesmahagow district. These were all 
new to science, and of the greatest possible interest from a biologi- 
cal as well as from a geological point of view. These fishes, having 
been intrusted by the Director-General of the Survey to Dr 
Traquair, formed the subject of the “ Report,” which, along with 
the other two Papers mentioned, will presently he published in 
the Transactions of the Society. 
It being usual for the chairman of the Opening Meeting to 
advert briefly to each of the members of the Society who have 
died during the preceding Session, I will give a few short notices 
of the deceased, which are by no means intended to supersede 
more elaborate obituary notices, which I hope we will receive. 
Brigade Surgeon Jambs Edward Tierney Aitchison was the 
son of the late Major J. Aitchison, H.E.I.C.S., and was horn in 
1835. After studying at Edinburgh University, and graduating 
M.D. and L.R.C.P. in 1856, he entered the Bengal medical 
service in 1858, in which he remained for thirty years. He 
obtained the qualification of F.R.C.S. Edinburgh in 1863. In 
1878 he served in the Afghan war. Edinburgh University con- 
ferred on him the degree of LL.D. in 1889. 
He was distinguished as a botanical explorer, and during the 
last thirty years added much to our knowledge of oriental floras. 
In 1878 Lord Roberts, then in command of the Kuram field force, 
applied to the Government for his services as botanist with the 
Army. There afterwards appeared in the Journal of the Linnean 
Society in 1880 and 1881, two papers detailing his discoveries and 
observations in the valleys of the Kuram and Koraia rivers. 
In 1884 Dr Aitchison was appointed scientific officer with the 
Afghan Delimitation Commission, and spent two years in Northern 
Baluchistan, the Helmund Valley, and the other districts in Central 
Asia traversed by the Commission. The results of these explora- 
tions were embodied in a paper printed by the Linnean Society in 
their Transactions for 1887. Dr Aitchison was an indefatigable 
collector. His Afghan and Central Asian collections amounted to 
