WILLIAM BARCLAY 
235 
inspirer of that small band of workers who set themselves the task of 
investigating the flora and fauna of the premier county of Scotland. 
With this aim in view, the Perthshire Society of Natural Science 
was founded in 1867, and few small societies can boast so fruitful 
a record of work of over fifty years. The chief botanical outcome of 
the Society’s labours was The Flora of Perthshire , published in 
1898. Both in the collection of material and in the preparation of 
the work for publication Barclay was intimately associated with the 
author and with the late Professor J. W. H. Trail, into whose hands 
fell the editing of the volume. But the appearance of the county 
Flora was not an end in itself. The work of the Society continued, 
and for twelve years Barclay was responsible for the publication of 
its Transactions and Proceedings , retiring from that duty only to 
fill the more arduous one of the presidential chair—an office he 
maintained with conspicuous ability and success for eleven years, 
resigning as recently as 1918. During his long association with the 
Society he contributed numerous papers to its publications, and it was 
typical of the man as a worker that when he had prepared some 
technical communication—usually exclusively botanical—as his Presi¬ 
dential Address he would ask it to be taken as read and would then 
deliver an illuminating account of some more general topic—not 
infrequently dealing with the history of his native city, a subject 
on which he was recognised as no mean authority. 
It was natural that Barclay’s botanical work should centre mainly 
on the flora of his own county ; its wood and glen, mountain and 
moor, river and loch provided ample and varied ground for the 
enthusiastic worker he was, and no more delightful and helpful 
companion in the field could one desire to meet. He knew Perthshire 
well, and many a botanist from across the Border sought his guidance 
to the stations for some of Britain’s rarest plants. 
In his countless excursions Barclay made discoveries which added 
greatly to our knowledge of the local distribution of plants within 
the county. An important paper was “ Additions to the List of 
Perthshire Plants since the Publication of Dr. White’s ‘ Flora,’ ” 
published in Proc. Perth. Soc. Nat. Sci. 1912. Some of his finds were 
of course of interest to botanists beyond the bounds of Perthshire : his 
discovery of Poa palustris in 1889 in the marshes of the Biver Tay 
below Perth constituted an addition to the British Flora ; Potamo- 
qeton venustus Baagoe, found in the Kiver Earn in 1915, proved to 
be the first British record for this rare hybrid pondweed ; while in 
the following year he added a second Scottish station at Loch Moraig 
for P . gracilis Wolfg. 
It was not, however, the mere finding and the collecting of plants 
that interested Barclay, although these he enjoyed as the reward of 
many a long tramp or toilsome climb, but it was the underlying 
problems of distribution that fascinated him. There is evidence of 
this in his early papers which deal with the floras of several restricted 
areas in his own immediate neighbourhood. Cataloguing in 1887 
the flowering plants of the “ Woody Island,” a small island in 
the Tay above Perth, he says: “ Nothing has struck me more 
forcibly in drawing up the list of the Woody Island Flora than the 
