ii Obituary .—David Thomas Gwynne- Vaughan. 
I first became acquainted with Gwynne-Vaughan in the autumn of 
1894. It was at the invitation of the Director, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 
that he came to work at the Jodrell Laboratory, of which I was then 
Honorary Keeper. After a couple of preliminary visits he started work on 
Oct. 12, beginning, by way of practice, with an examination of the roots 
of Pandctnus . We used to go round the houses and pits together, and he 
soon became familiar with the treasures of Kew. He made a good many 
observations on Cycads, and took part in the hunt for centrosomes, on which 
in those days we were all bent, led by the flattering tale which had been 
told so well. 
Gwynne- Vaughan’s skill as a microscopist soon became evident, and 
from the outset he was very keen. For the first three months or so his 
work was rather miscellaneous — he was getting into training. In January, 
1895, he began to settle down to definite research. His first subject was 
the anatomy and morphology of Nymphaeaceae, on which he made some 
curious and interesting observations, afterwards embodied in his Notes of 
1896 and paper of 1897, referred to further on. 
Kew . provided him with some specially interesting material for his 
work ; in particular, a whole series of seedlings of Victoria regia , at suc- 
cessive stages, was placed at his disposal. In suggesting the group for 
investigation, I had specially in view the peculiarities of its anatomy, to 
which Gwynne-Vaughan was soon able to add some new and unexpected 
features ; at the same time his attention was further directed to points in 
the external morphology 
A little later, in May of the same year, he took up another anatomical 
subject, the structure of polystelic Primulas ; as the result of his observa- 
tions he was able to make a considerable advance on the views of 
Van Tieghem. 
.About this time there was some question of his going on an expedition 
to South Brazil, but it was not till a couple of years later that his hopes of 
tropical travel were realized. 
In September, 1895, Gwynne-Vaughan attended the meeting of the 
British Association at Ipswich, the first at which a separate Section for 
Botany was constituted. 
On October 8, 1895, W. H. Lang (now Professor of Cryptogamic 
Botany in the University of Manchester) first came to the Jodrell Labora- 
tory. This was the beginning of the close and life-long friendship between 
him and Gwynne-Vaughan. 
In November of that year Gwynne-Vaughan showed me the draft of 
his Nymphaeaceae paper, the first written product of his work ; it was 
considerably extended before publication, and some of the most interesting 
results were recorded meantime in two Notes in the ‘ Annals of Botany ’ 
(1896). 
