Obituary . — David Thomas G wynne- Vaughan. xiii 
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(1912-13) he was Recorder of the Section. He contributed greatly to the 
success of the Botanical Section while an officer, and would have made an 
excellent President if he had lived. 
In 1909 he received the MacDougall Brisbane Medal for Research 
from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1912 became a Member of 
the Royal Irish Academy. In 1914 he was appointed External Examiner 
to the University of Glasgow. 
He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1907, and was 
a member of Council at the time of his death. 
Published Work. 
Gwynne-Vaughan’s first publication was a Note in ‘ Science Gossip ’ 
(June 1894) on the rare Crucifer, Arabis stricta , Huds., the Bristol Rock 
Cress. He had found it on an ancient camp, near Llandrindod, Radnor- 
shire, and sent it to the Editors, who confirmed his identification, adding 
that ‘ any records of so rare a plant are particularly interesting ’. So far as 
I know, it had previously been recorded only from Clifton and Cheddar, 
and its speedy extinction was anticipated by Bentham and Hooker. 
The first published result of his research work at Kew was a Note 
in the c Annals of Botany ’ (1896. 1), ‘ On a New Case of Polystely in Dicotyle- 
dons \ At that time we were very keen on polystely and such phenomena, 
under the influence of Van Tieghem’s anatomical conceptions. Gwynne- 
Vaughan showed that the tuber-bearing stolons in certain species of 
Nymphaea have a clearly polystelic structure, which he compared with 
the structure of the main stem in the related genera Cabomba and Brasenia. 
What was still more important in those days, he was able to demonstrate, 
within the family, a complete series of transitions between polystely and 
astely. 
The paper read at the British Association that year, which so impressed 
Professor Bower, covered nearly the same ground, but added the new fact 
that ‘ root-bearing steles ’ occur in the rhizomes of Victoria and Nymphaea 
spp. (1896. 2). 
The full paper 4 On the Morphology and Anatomy of the Nymphaeaceae’ 
was published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society (1897. 1). I had 
to read it for him (on Feb. 18) as he was then busy at Glasgow. It is 
a rather miscellaneous paper, for he began with the morphology of the 
leaf, showing how the ontogeny of the individual adult leaf repeats the 
successive forms of the seedling leaves, constituting a special case of 
Recapitulation. He also investigated the origin of the peltate form of 
leaf. He pointed out the remarkable absence of any primitive stages, 
whether morphological or anatomical, in the seedling of Nelumbium , so 
different from the conditions in the Water-lilies. 
