In Memoriam : William West, F. L.S. 229 
and the reports he drew up for 1879 and 1S80 amply evidence 
his all-round botanical status. After the first few years the 
increasing claims of his professional work precluded his taking 
a very active part in the proceedings, but he was always 
interested, and was one of the chief botanical experts, and 
eventually the appreciation of the members was shown by his 
election to the Presidency of the Union. This was in 1899, 
at the close of which he delivered an able address, in which 
he gave a closely-reasoned ‘ Outline of the Evolution of Plants.’ 
In the earlier years (1878 to about 1887) he was an all- 
round botanist, with an unapproachably wide and accurate 
knowledge of all groups both of flowering and flowerless plants. 
Numerous notes and short papers, upon such subjects as 
Mosses (1878), the Autumn Flora of Whernside (1879), Lichens 
in Buckinghamshire (1880), a Stroll near Baildon in February 
(1881), a Few r Days’ at Field Botany in Scotland (1881-2), the 
Principal Plants of Malham (1883), the Plants of the Bradford 
District (1886), the Towton Rose (1891), and a considerable 
amount of material contributed to Lees’ Flora of West York- 
shire (1888), appeared during these years, and in 1904 he co- 
operated with Mr. John Cryer in a paper on the New Polygala. 
Good as was all this preliminary botanical work, excellent 
as was his educational work at the college, his principal work 
in life was now being taken up, and he was concentrating his 
energy and ability upon the study of the Freshwater Algae, 
especially upon the Desmidiaceae. His son George was now 
growing up, and co-operating in these studies. 
And now it was that the practical self-training of the 
father, the parental and academic training of the son, based 
as they were upon the combinionat of field-work and minute 
and precise appreciation of specific and varietal differentia- 
tion on the one hand, and on the other of capacity for broad 
generalization, began to bear fruit in abundant measure. 
Theirs was no mere local study, the whole world became 
their province ; and the possession of the complete literature 
and of innumerable gatherings from everywhere that an 
algologist went, with the ready aid of leading European 
and American investigators, enabled the two Wests to establish 
their reputation among the foremost students of their subject, 
fully abreast of their greatest contemporaries, fully equal to 
their most distinguished predecessors. 
Indeed the father’s most extraordinary knowledge of 
cryptogams, w r hich was both wide and deep, whether these 
were mosses, hepatics, lichens or algse, and of their ecological 
conditions, made him a quite unique personality, certainly in 
Britain, probably in Europe. He was always in advance of 
his time, an ecologist long before the term itself was invented. 
1914 July 1 
