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Ernest Lee. 
ERNEST LEE. 
Ernest Lee was killed in the trenches of the Western Front, 
on July 10th, 1915. He was born at Stanley Cross End, Yorkshire, 
on April 11th, 1886, but spent most of his childhood at Burnley, 
where his parents took up their residence. It was at the evening 
classes of the Burnley Technical Institute that he was first able to 
get lessons in natural science. Those who learn the elements of 
science under such conditions must have some grit to carry on. 
In 1906, Lee obtained a National Scholarship in Geology and went 
to the Royal College of Science. There he had a successful career, 
obtaining a first class A.R.C.Sc., the Edward Forbes Medal and 
Prize in Botany and a Marshall Scholarship in 1909. The last 
enabled him to stay another year at college and he worked at the 
Morphology of Leaf Fall on which he published a paper in the 
Annals of Botany, 1911. In May, 1910, he was appointed 
Demonstrator in Botany at Birkbeck College and in the following 
year Assistant Lecturer. It was in the autumn of 1910 that I first 
met Lee. We became good friends immediately, though we saw 
little of each other away from the college, except that we went 
together on occasional botany rambles, to Chelsea Gardens, or, at 
times, to a music hall. No one could wish for a better colleague: 
he was ever ready to assist in any possible way he could. He was 
an enthusiastic lecturer and took endless trouble in preparing work 
for his classes. The students appreciated him ; it was apparent at 
the time but it was most obvious when the classes returned after 
the summer vacation of 1913 to find that he had left for the 
Department of Agricultural Botany at Leeds University. 1 Away 
from college he was just as enthusiastic and was perhaps at his 
best on a botanical excursion. Interested in most branches of 
botany, an excellent field man both from a floristic and an ecological 
point of view—over lunch and a cigarette he was quite prepared 
either to “ rag ” or to talk on sociological or philosophical subjects, 
showing particular keenness on social problems. He was no mere 
dreamer but matter of fact, shrewd, and a man of stern and clear 
convictions, generous, a thorough sportsman with a keen sense of 
humour. When certain of himself he was indisposed to compromise, 
and he had a full endowment of the northern Englishman’s lust of 
battle. I have no idea as to what his religious beliefs or politics 
were : of this I am certain that in any position in which he was 
1 See also an obituary notice by Dr. H. C. I. Gwynne-Vaughan in Ann. 
Bot. xxix, p. 639 (1915). 
