In Menwriam : H. Franklin Parsons, M.D. 
9 
Intimate, bound by a common love of problems botanical 
and chemical, from 1870 to 1880 at least, of late years distance 
interfered with acquaintance, but his two latest contributions 
to Science, ‘ The Flora of the Commons near Croydon’ (1911), 
and ‘Plant growth and Soil Conditions’ (1913), may well 
serve to clew up and emphasise his intellectual equipment 
for investigation calling for acuteness of insight into facts, 
and their interpretation. A ‘ plain ’ man, as the world 
classes facial contours, to meet his eye, to hear him ‘ suggest ’ a 
view or expound a thesis, was to fall under the spell of a singu- 
larly simple, direct, truthful and insightful personality. 
Charles Darwin, alone of men I have met, impressed one with 
a like mental magic. ‘ Imagination.’ that second-sight 
equipment which has in the past done more for exact science 
than most people are ready to allow, was perhaps his chief 
intellectual lack, but it was more than compensated for by his 
marvellous storehouse of knowledge, wide in its range, and 
inexclusive in its nature. He could seize a thing by the right 
handle and Epictetus of old said everything had two. one 
negligable — quicker than anyone I ever met. such was the 
mental alertitude of his character. In saying this one perhaps 
says enough ; many of the members of the Yorkshire Natur- 
alists’ Union who knew him while still with us, are alive yet, 
though that calls to mind Canon Fowler, Thomas Hick, and 
other mind-friends of which the years have bereft us. 
Physically, Dr. Parsons was lamentably unfortunate. 
The ‘ sword ’ ever tended to wear out the scabbard, his nervous 
energy was ever immense. Beginning to practise his pro- 
fession in the country district of Beckington (near Bath) where 
my knowledge of him commenced, he came to Goole (his centre 
for the Selby Health area) in 1874, married Miss Wells (of Hook) 
a few years later, she pre-deceasecl him, to pass the last two 
years of his life, alas ! for a man of such activity and open-air 
interests, a cripple. He himself so phrased it to the writer 
little more than a month before his death. An ‘ obscure 
disease ’ of the bone of the leg necessitated amputation. Yet 
he wrote cheerily enough, though no more able to trudge 
about as he used one time to do over the pits and barrows and 
through the pools of Riccal and Skipwith commons, enjoining 
his attendant satellites, on Sphagna bent, to ‘up and on.’ or 
‘ away, my merry, merry men.’ His contributions to York- 
shire botany, the back parts of the Union’s Transactions 
bear testimony that in no single fact or conclusion has ever 
needed, or probably will need, revision or modification. 
F. A. Lees. 
♦♦ 
Dr. A. Strachan, F.R.S., takes the position of Director of the Geo- 
logical Survey, in place of Dr. J. J. H. Teall, who retires this month. 
1914 Jan. 1. 
