Vol. LVI, No. 8. 
TRYON MEMORIAL LECTURE. 
77 
Henry Tryon — First Hon. Secretary, Royal Society of 
Queensland, and his place in Queensland Science. 
By C. T. White, Government Botanist, Brisbane. 
(Read before the Royal Society of Queensland, 30 th October , 1944; 
issued separately, 25 th June, 1945.) 
Henry Tryon, one of the outstanding personalities of the early 
scientific life of Queensland and a contemporary of such well-known 
figures as R. L. Jack, F. M. Bailey, Jos. Bancroft and C. W. De Vis, 
came to this State about 1882 and obtained his first official position as 
an assistant at the Queensland Museum in 1883. He was born at 
Buckfastleigh, South Devon, England, on 20th December, 1856, and died 
at Brisbane on 15th November, 1943. 
After a primary education at Sherwood College, he became a medical 
student at the London Hospital, one of his instructors being the celebrated 
Ray Lancaster, for whom throughout his life he had the profoundest 
regard. Medicine, however, apparently did not appeal to the young man 
as a profession and he left the hospital before completing his course 
and turned towards the study of natural history. Tryon was a 
naturalist of the old school in the sense that he was interested in all 
branches of natural science and had a good working knowledge of 
geology, insects, shells, birds, plants and general zoology. The more 
exact parts of the natural sciences such as taxonomy and anatomy 
appealed to him more than the philosophical, and thus it was that 
Darwinism, with all its subsequent bearing on biological science, passed 
him by so that he always seemed quite unaware of its very existence. 
An indication of his outlook on science may well be ascertained from 
the subject of his presidential address before the Queensland Field 
Naturalists’ club in 1908 — “ Linnaeus and Buff on. ” It was of their type 
that he was a great admirer. 
One of his earliest exploits in natural history soon after leaving the 
medical school was to travel through Sweden following the tracks of the 
great Linnaeus collecting plants and insects, particularly the former. 
This was a great joy to him, and in later years he often lived this trip 
over again in memory. 
Later he journeyed to New Zealand managing a grazing property for 
his father, but here again the love of nature called him away on a lengthy 
collecting tour. New Zealand hills having too strong a pull for him to 
resist. He became friendly with Thos. Kirk and paid special attention 
to the botany of New Zealand. It is pleasing to know that his collections, 
which were extensive, have found a permanent home in the Queensland 
State Herbarium, from where duplicates when available have been 
distributed to kindred institutions. New Zealand made a strong appeal 
to him and he always retained pleasant memories of the time spent there, 
and never lost his knowledge of the Maori language. The life of a grazier 
made no appeal to him, and hearing of the great possibilities of the 
sugar industry in North Queensland and wanting to do something fresh, 
he decided to come to this country. He travelled a great deal over much 
of North Queensland looking at sugar lands, but there was one life that 
Tryon was destined for, and that was the pursuit of natural science. 
In 1883 he received his first appointment as an assistant at the Queens- 
land Museum, then under the directorate of C. W. De Vis. After some 
years as Assistant Curator at the Museum, Tryon was appointed, in 1894, 
N 
