82 
A. G. Tansley. 
But he was easily top of the candidates in botany, though by far 
the youngest of them, and he got an exhibition at Trinity, and the 
same year the Drapers’ Company’s “ Soley ” Scholarship. He 
came into residence at Trinity in October, 1909, and later on 
obtained a foundation scholarship there. 
Of his undergraduate days it is difficult for one who was not 
his contemporary to write at all adequately. He was modest and 
reticent in demeanour, with a strong sense of humour and a pretty 
gift of irony, and he always gave one the impression of a great deal 
of personality beneath the quiet surface. One of his friends writes 
of “ that sudden intense keenness and sparkling interest that used 
to bubble up when he was aroused about something and wanted to 
carry you with him. It was a great charm . . . . ” Apart from the 
talent for languages, which has been already mentioned, he had 
distinctly literary tastes. Especially, as one of his close friends 
writes, was he attracted to the quaint or the bizarre. He contribu¬ 
ted some excellent stuff to the humorous Cambridge Botany 
School “ Tea-Phyt-ologist,” an erratic production—it can hardly be 
called a periodical—of which three numbers appeared at irregular 
intervals. For his work he always showed a genuine love. After 
getting a first class in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 
1912, he took Botany for Part II in 1913. During the last year or 
so before the final examination, perhaps he scattered his interest 
too much to be good for his botany and he rather neglected some 
parts of the subject, so that though he got a first-class he did not 
get it too easily. After his Tripos he was awarded the Frank Smart 
studentship in botany and migrated to Caius. 
His favourite subjects in botany were ecology and taxonomy, 
but his interests were very wide and he definitely refused after his 
Tripos to confine himself to one line of research. During the long 
vacation of 1913 he carried out (with help from several others in 
the laborious work of surveying) the main part of an investigation 
of the vegetation of the salt marsh and sand dunes at Holme just 
north of Hunstanton in Norfolk. This work he continued at 
intervals till the summer of 1914, and the results were published in 
“The maritime ecology of Holme-iiext-the-Sea, Norfolk” (Journal 
of Ecology, June, 1915). For the lines on which it was conceived 
this is an admirable and admirably executed piece of work, bringing 
out very clearly certain of the edaphic relations of the salt marsh 
vegetation. In the long vacation of 1913, Marsh also carried out a 
small investigation on Cycad anatomy, “ Notes on the anatomy of 
