REMINISCENCES OF A Yorkshire Naturalist REMINISCENCES OF A Yorkshire Naturalist BY THE LATE WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON LL.D., F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER EDITED BY HIS WIFE LONDON GEORGE REDWAY 1896 PREFACE WRITING these reminiscences of his life's work was one of the pleasures of Dr. Williamson's later years. I have thought it better to give them to his readers without alteration, and have done nothing more than put his disconnected sketches into some- thing like order, add a few footnotes, and the last pages. For kind supervision of the chapter on Palseo- botany I am indebted to Dr. D. H. Scott. I have compiled the list of writings from the " Catalogue of Scientific Works " published by the Royal Society (a proof of the last edition of which — now in the press — was kindly sent me by the Secretary), and from works in my own possession. A. C. W. 43 ELMS ROAD, CLAPHAM COMMON, S.W. CONTENTS CHAPTER I John Williamson's Narrative— Maternal Grandparents— Craw- ford Laboratory — Childhood — Dame Schools — Mr. Potter's School — Lebberston — Mrs. Johnson — William Smith — Thomas Hinderwell — Phillips' "Geology of the Yorkshire Coast " — Smith's Personality — Thornton School — Journey to France — Life at Bourbourg .... pp. 1-23 CHAPTER II Visit to London — Murchison — Theatres — Return Home — Weddell's Surgery — Surgery Work — Carrying Physic — Domestic Life — Surgery Cleaning — Doctors' Bills — Distribu- tion of Country Bills — System of Apprenticeship — Shooting and Plant Hunting — Awakening Cords — Polytrichum on Oliver's Mount — Memoir on Rare Birds — Fossil Flora — Drawing on the Kitchen Table — Weddell's Botanical Lec- tures—Staith's Excursion — Memoir to Geological Society — Fate of this Memoir — Messrs. Tate and Blake's Misrepre- sentation— Insect Hunting — Nebria Livida — Second Dis- covery of Nebria Livida — Pomerine Skua . pp. 24-42 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER III Story of Tumulus — Ransom and Binion's Visit to Scarborough —Dr. Phillips' Visit— Peak Hill Journey— My Leaving Scarborough Discussed — York Mail — Invitation to and Appointment in Manchester— Science in East Yorkshire — Nature of Coast — Chalk and Speeton Clay — Judd — Oolites and Lias — Early Abundance of Fossils, Kettleness Ammo- nites, &c. — Modern Scarcity — Operative Collectors — Rudd and Peter — Young and Bird's Book — Young's Ignorance — Rise of Phillips and the York Circle — Scientific men at Hull, Leeds, Whitby, Newcastle, Durham, and Berwick PP- 43-58 CHAPTER IV Difficulties in the Manchester Natural History Society — Harrop and his Friends — Questions of Salary — Literary and Philosophical Society — Limestones in the Neighbour- hood of the Town — Dr. Henry's Determination — Leigh and Binney's Memoir— My Memoir on Ardwick Beds — Council Dispute upon my Expenses — Phillips and Fleming — Threatened Duel — Museum Work among Birds — Pseudo Naturalists — Tricks upon Amateurs — Fossil Fishes — Paper for British Association Meeting at Liverpool— My Private Life — Methodist Friends — Resignation of Curatorship — Preparations for Lecturing Tour — Medical Student Life in Manchester— Manchester Scientific Life— Dalton— Dalton and his Portraits— Dr. William Henry, Roberts, Sir William Fairbairn, and Eaton Hodgkinson — Whitworth — Black wall — James Aspinall Turner — Binney — Botanical Clubs — Buxton — Sir Edward Smith — Mr. John Moore — Leo Grindon — Peter Clare — Dr. Edward Holmes — Social Condition of the Literary and Philosophical Society . . pp. 59-84 CONTENTS CHAPTER V Commencement of Medical Studentship in London University College — Teaching Staff— Fellow Students — Search for Fritillaria meleagris— Geological Society — Syrian Fossils — Attic Lodgings and Life — Niger Expedition — College Caps and Gowns — Final Examinations — Return to Manchester — Commencement of Practice — Operation for Strabismus — Mantell's " Medals of Creation "—My Father's " Culpepper " — Mr. Joseph Sidebotham — Microscopic Observation — Elected Member of Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society — Lyon Playfair and Dr. Joule — Sturgeon — Potato Disease — Clairvoyance — Braid and Hypnotism — False Hypnotism pp. 85-103 CHAPTER VI Sharpey's Bone Question — Cell Question — Foraminifera — Ehrenberg's Memoir— New Microscope — Memoir on Mud of the Levant — Old Writers on Foraminifera — Polystomella Crispa — Mr. Reckitt of Boston — Method of Preparing Foraminifera — Memoir of 1848 — Monograph for Ray Society —Memoir for the Yorkshire Philosophical Society— Zamia gigas Memoir— Robert Brown— Forbes— Mr. Carruthers— Publication of Memoir — Volvox Globata — Professor Cohn of Breslau pp. 104-118 CHAPTER VII Resumption of Cell Question — Ossification of Cartilage — Professor Schwann and Dr. Schleiden — Dr. Sharpey and Bone Development — Agassiz' Classification of Fishes — Geological Distribution of Four Classes — Bearing of Ganoid Scales on Owen's " Odontology " — Memoir for Royal Society CONTENTS in 1849 — Second Memoir for the Royal Society, 1850 — Professor Kolliker — Position of Oral Teeth in Relation to Skeleton — Oral Teeth really Dermal Structure — Huxley's Acceptance of this — Mr. Charles Tomes — Structure of Fish Bones— Links in Scale of Organisation Missing from Living Forms but Found in Fossils — Links in Bones of Living Fishes and Placoid Saw Fish . . . pp. 119-130 CHAPTER VIII Death of Owens — Announcement of Will — Proceedings of Trustees — Theological Question — Professors Appointed — First Meeting with Dr. Greenwood — Manchester Free Library — My own Appointment to Chair of Natural History — Botany — Geology — Opening of College — My Early Teaching — Progress of College— Evening Classes — Decrease in Number of Students — Condition of Boys' Education in Manchester — Resignation of Principal Scott — Appointment of Professor Greenwood to Principalship — Laboratory Teaching Needed — My Chair too Big for Good Teaching to be Possible — Professor Dawkins' Appointment — Social Life of Professors — Difficulties of Popularity pp. 131-143 CHAPTER IX M. Meniere and Paris — Establishment of Ear Institute — Fresh Water Animalculae — Memoir in the Journal of Microscopical Science — Birth and Death of our First Child— Birth of other Daughters and of a Son— Contributions to the London Quarterly — Journeys to Switzerland with Mr. John Fernley — Removal to Fallowfield — Construction of Garden — Family Excursion through Switzerland — Illness and Death of my Wife pp. 144-151 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER X Removal of College to Oxford Road— Increase of Laboratory Work — Appointment of Professor Marshall— Professor Marshall Ward, F.R.S. — Establishment of " University " — New Medical Schools — New Biological Laboratories — Curious Medical Cases — Coal Investigation . . pp. 152-160 CHAPTER XI Invitation to give the Friday Evening Lecture for the British Association at Bradford— Lectures at the Royal Institution— Gilchrist Lectures — Second Marriage — Mackenzie Walcott — Victoria Cave— Dr. Ryle— Sketches of Thirlmere— Visit to Bolton Abbey — Bristol British Association Meeting — Glasgow B.A. Meeting— Expedition to Arran— Presbyterian Opinions- Controversy with the Duke of Argyll — Second Visit to Arran —The Arran Forest pp. 161-177 CHAPTER XII The Union of Yorkshire Naturalists— Lecture at Malton— Agricultural Controversy — Fossil Fucoids — Memoir on Undescribed Tracks of Invertebrate Animals from the Yoredale Rocks — Imitative Water Marks — Sigillaria and Stigmaria— Monograph for the Palaeontographical Society — The Clayton Fossil Tree — Positions of Responsibility and Distinction — Meeting of British Association in Manchester pp. 178-190 CHAPTER XIII Vegetable Remains in the Carboniferous Rocks — Sternbergia Approximata— M. Brongniart's "Prodrome d'une Histoire xii CONTENTS des Vegetaux Fossiles "— Mr. Dawes of Birmingham — My First Sections of Calamites — Mr. Binney's Investigations — M. Grand' Eury — My First Memoir — M. Brongniart's "Histoire des Vegetaux Fossiles" — Cryptogamic Nature of the most Ancient Fossil Plants — Exogenous Growth in Calamites and Sigillaria— Declared by M. Brongniart not to be Cryptogams — Mr. Butterworth of Oldham — Second Memoir — Series of Memoirs for the Royal Society "On the Organisation of the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures" British Association at Edinburgh — Controversy in Nature — Views of M. Renault, M. Grand1 Eury, and the Marquis de Saporta — Memoir for the Annales des Sciences Naturelles — M. Grand1 Eury accepts View that Calamites and Sigillaria are Cryptogams pp. 191-208 CHAPTER XIV From 1887 to the End pp. 209-215 BIBLIOGRAPHY Approximate List of Writings by Dr. W. C. Williamson pp. 217-228 REMINISCENCES OF A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST CHAPTER I John Williamson's narrative — Maternal grandparents — Crawford laboratory — Childhood — Dame schools — Mr. Potter's school — Lebberston — Mrs. Johnson — William Smith— Thomas Hinderwell— Phillips' " Geo- logy of the Yorkshire Coast " — Smith's personality — Thornton school — Journey to France — Life at Bour- bourg. THE early history of the families of British crafts- men is rarely preserved, and the only record of my paternal ancestry is a brief autobiographical memo- randum, given to me by my father many years ago. In this he says : — " The only recollection I have of my grandfather " is that of an old man living in a small cottage in the " village of Fridaythorpe, in East Yorkshire, where " I was once taken by my father to see him. " My father was shepherd to some of the large " sheep-farmers in the same district. He was a A 2 REMINISCENCES OF " hard-working, saving man, who took little pleasure " beyond a visit to York about once a year. "The village inn at Fridaythorpe was a place " where he often met his acquaintance during the " winter evenings. It was kept by a friend, whom " he had at various times assisted, by lending him " money. This man, finding that he could not con- "duct the house any longer with profit, offered it " to my father, who was persuaded by his friends " to take it. This new business required him to be "more frequently absent from home. Amongst " other places where he was in the habit of going " was Driffield. There he became acquainted with, " and eventually married, Mary Bean. Her father "was a large market-gardener at Brompton, near "Scarborough, and he attended the Scarborough " markets three times a week. My father and " mother lived at the inn at Fridaythorpe, where I " was born in the year 1784. They carried it on for " several years, but finding it did not answer, they " gave it up, and removed to Scarborough. At that " time my uncle, William Bean, had established a " large fruit garden at Scarborough, which he also "threw open as Subscription Promenade Grounds " for summer visitors, by whom it was much " frequented.* * These gardens occupied the entire space between Huntriss Row and the present railway station. Their extent and position are well shown in a map published in HinderweU's " History of Scarborough."— A. C. W. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 3 "When about nine years old I was sent into " these gardens, and when I had been there about " two years I was apprenticed to my uncle for seven " years more. Before this time expired my uncle " died, and it fell to my lot to conduct the business " until I was eighteen or nineteen years of age. At " this age, wishing to learn the higher branches of " gardening, I left the place and took a situation as Bunder-gardener at Wykeham Abbey, then in the " hands of the Langleys. After being at Wykeham " three years, I became head-gardener to Lord " Mulgrave, of Mulgrave Castle, near Whitby, where " I remained several years. When I returned to " Scarborough I engaged myself to my cousin, " William Bean, who had carried on his father's " business since I left for Wykeham. He did not " like the work of superintendence, and transferred " it to my shoulders, but soon gave up the gardens " entirely. I then started business on my own " account, looking after the gardens of several "residents of Scarborough, which kept me nicely " employed. " It was during my leisure hours at this time that " I commenced the study of geology, entomology, " conchology, and ornithology. The collections "which I made were afterwards deposited in the "Scarborough Museum, which was built in the year " 1827-28. To this museum I was appointed curator, " and fulfilled the duties of the situation more than 41 twenty-seven years." 4 REMINISCENCES OF Such is my father's account of himself. The registers kept in and for the parish of Fridaythorpe, his native village, record, "John, son of William "Williamson, baptized September 5th, 1784." Thus far I have said nothing of my mother and her family. Whilst at Mulgrave my father became engaged to, and afterwards married, Miss Elizabeth Crawford, eldest of the thirteen children of a jeweller and lapidary of Scarborough. My father's love-making was characteristic of the boundless energy of his later life. Mulgrave was about twenty-two miles from Scar- borough, and his only chance for seeing his betrothed was on Sundays. After he had finished work at the gardens on Saturday night he walked to Scar- borough, spent Sunday with my mother, walked back on Sunday night, and was at his post looking after his men at six o'clock on Monday morning. My maternal grandfather was a Scotchman, born in 1756, and, so far as I can learn, was the son of either a farmer or a small jeweller and watchmaker, living at Haddington : subsequent events make the latter occupation most probable. At that time Scotland was suffering reaction from the events of "'45." The dominant military party consisted chiefly of English or Irish men, whose officers were proud and overbearing. My grandfather walking one evening with a friend, whom I very well remember, met two officers, who insisted upon keeping the wall, though they were on A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 5 the wrong side ; finding the lads disinclined to yield at command, which they had predetermined not to do, one of the officers struck my grandfather with his cane. In response the assailant received a skilful blow, which promptly levelled him with the ground. Reflection soon showed the young athletes that in the then despotic state of military feeling, serious consequences might ensue. Hence, the same night, they fled across the border, and ultimately reached Whitby. My grandfather at once obtained work in a watch- maker and jeweller's shop ; which inclines one to believe that a part of his Scotch training had been in a similar establishment. A young farmer's daughter, who rode on horseback past his window, on her way to Whitby every market-day, attracted his attention, and he ultimately married her, the lady bringing him at the same time a thousand pounds. The young couple soon came to Scarborough, where my grandfather established himself, and of their thirteen children my mother was the eldest. My own affection for this fine Scotchman when I was a very young child was intense. One part of his business was the cleaning of clocks, and when he had such duties to perform at the farm- houses of villages surrounding the town, he would take me along with him, bird-nesting by the way dividing the time with clock cleaning. One of this old gentleman's accomplishments was the 6 REMINISCENCES OF art of enamelling in gold leaf upon glass ; this he did very beautifully, but by a secret method lost at his death. The son, Walton Crawford, who succeeded to his father's business, also developed a special art, and made peculiar butterfly brooches from local stones. I was for years in the habit of spending much time in their workshops, watching them cutting and working with the diamond and emery wheels the various agates then obtained abundantly amongst the gravels of the coast, and manufacturing them into pins, bracelets, brooches, and other personal ornaments — a youthful training which became of the utmost value to me more than a third of a century later, when scientific research required me to devote much of my own time to similar work. My eldest brother died of meningitis, in all pro- bability from over-education at too early an age. My father, having himself enjoyed no educational advantages, determined that any child he might have should start life under less difficult con- ditions ; but unfortunately he knew nothing of the dangers attending the over-stimulation of an infantile brain. The child in question, when under six years of age, being accidentally taken into a friend's printing-office, and seeing a frame of type prepared for printing part of a small newspaper, astonished those who were with him by reading the type, not- withstanding its reversed position. No wonder the child died when little more than five years old. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 7 I was myself born in Huntriss Row, on Novem- ber 24th, 1816. At this time Bean's Subscription Gardens no longer existed, large plots having been cut off for building purposes. My father had ex- tended his scientific explorations, so as to include in his collection a large number of fossils, minerals, shells, crustaceans, and insects ; in consequence a wing was added to the back of the house, with the object of supplying a spacious room for a museum, wherein to preserve the rapidly increasing store of natural objects. A small room next to this museum witnessed my birth. My only sister Ellen, born in 1813, was then living. At the age of about three years I was sent to my first school. At that time one of the older relics of the town, known as St. Thomas' Hospital, was in existence. It was a small pile of low, white, thatched cottages. In one of these an aged woman and her daughter kept a dame's school,* * Dr. Williamson has often described his reading lessons ; one especially interested him. On a bright spring morn- ing, when the sun streamed through the cottage window and almost extinguished a smouldering fire, the dame, an old lady wearing a frilled cap, sat in an armchair knitting; the student, an eager, white-faced lad, with scarlet frock and white pinafore, stood at her knee, holding a folio some six inches square, called a battledore, on the inside of which the alphabet was printed ; capital letters on one side, small ones on the other. The dame, almost asleep, but mechanically knitting, droned " Large * A,' Willie," and Willie, with eyes anywhere except on the letter, repeated. " Small * A,' Willie," droned the sleepy voice. Willie again 8 REMINISCENCES OF and here they inducted me into the mysteries of the alphabet. A few months before this a second brother had been born; he also succumbed to meningitis in July 1822, at the age of three years and nine months. Meanwhile, I was removed to a more advanced dame school, kept for many years in Newborough Street, near the Bar, by one, Miss Bulmer. Later, I was once more removed, this time to a school in which a Miss Doughty wielded the ferule. About the time of my second brother's death, at the age of five or six years, I was transferred to the school of Mr. William Potter, located for a time at the lower end of Huntriss Row, and later in King Street. At this latter place, where the sons of many of the West Riding middle-class people re- ceived their education, I remained a number of years. It cannot be justly affirmed that this school was a bad example of the type to which it belonged ; but seeing that the payment for its advantages to day scholars amounted to only one guinea per quarter, the type was not a high one. The usher was rarely a competent man, and the educational system of the period allowed him to be rather a hearer of lessons than a true teacher. There was no pretence of either French or German being taught in schools of this class. Of English grammar, repeated, when a butterfly, the first of the season, caught his eye, and the young naturalist, regardless alike of dame and letters, darted after it. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 9 I only remember having three lessons out of Lindley Murray. This being replaced by the Eton Latin grammar, over which I had to toil in memoritory fashion ; learning in some confused and blundering way to apply its rules to Eutropius, Caesar, Horace, and Virgil, but knowing very little about the matter, either then or for long afterwards. On the death of my second brother in the summer of 1822, from the same cerebral disease as had caused the death of his predecessor, Dr. Thompson, an able physician as well as an enthusiastic devotee to the rod, warned my parents that I must be taken away from school, or I should break down in the same manner. Hence the first of many interruptions which reduced my school career almost to a dead letter. I was sent to the farmhouse of a friend who resided at Lebberston, about five miles from Scar- borough. Here, during the days of my holiday, I scampered among the haycocks, jumped over corn sheaves, followed the waggons to and from the field, and only returned to my home and school as the summer drew to a close. An old widow lady named Johnson resided in my father's house, upon whom the domestic care of us children devolved. When the old lady died, she left a few hundreds of pounds to my father, which ought to have helped us ; but, unfortunately, through his life he hankered after speculation in shipping, and whenever he found himself in possession of money, indulged this inclination. So, in this in- io REMINISCENCES OF stance, the new bequest made him part owner of a brig called "Mercury," which, a few years after, ended her own career, and the chief part of his investment among the rocks south of the Scar- borough Spa. Meanwhile my school life was a succession of broken attendances, alternating with longer or shorter holidays. Each midsummer vacation was ushered in by public recitations, the preparation for which seriously interfered with scholastic work during the greater part of June. On these occa- sions I became familiar with Home's Tragedy of " Douglas," "The King and the Miller of Mansfield," and somewhat later with Scott's " Lady of the "Lake." After each of these performances, several weeks were regularly spent at Lebberston. Instructions, I doubt not, were given to Mr. Smith, the farmer, to keep me in the open air as much as possible. Hence he gave me to understand that I was en- trusted with a special office connected with the well- being of the farm. I was furnished with a tin canister containing gravel, and it was my duty to wander round the cornfields rattling my canister, in order to frighten away the birds, and prevent them from consuming the grain. Many of these lonely hours were spent in the indulgence of vague dream s, characteristic of the boyish ambition for being "somebody." Now, I was Norval, the Lord of Douglas ; dock stalks supplied me with swords, my A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST n straw hat became a shield ; and with this armament,, in the combination of heroic solitary declamation with the rattling of my canister, days passed healthily away, but I was unmistakably ambitious of being a hero. In 1824 my father became personally acquainted with the great Father of Geology, William Smith, and with his subsequently distinguished nephew, the late Professor John Phillips. In 1826 Dr. Smith and his eccentric wife estab- lished themselves in our house, where they dwelt for a considerable time. In the same year my father became friend and correspondent of the late Sir Roderick Murchison, whom Dr. Smith and he conducted on a geological excursion to the more important localities of the Yorkshire coast, with which my father was so thoroughly acquainted. In 1825 Thomas Hinderwell, the distinguished historian of Scarborough, died, leaving a small collection of fossils and minerals to his nephew, William Thornton Duesberry, then a Scarborough solicitor, who offered to give them to the town whenever it should erect an appropriate museum for their reception. Stimu- lated by this offer, steps were immediately taken for the erection of the present museum, my father at once appointed curator, and a literary and philo- sophical society was established in connection with it. One equally important event to me was the publication, by Professor Phillips, then curator of the museum at York, of his classic volume on the 12 REMINISCENCES OF " Geology of the Yorkshire Coast." Up to this time my father's collection of fossils was practically un- named, but the appearance of Phillips' book, in which most of our specimens were figured, enabled us to remedy this defect. Every evening was devoted by us to accomplishing the work. This was my first introduction to true scientific study. I had long before accompanied my father on his geological excursions, and about the same time we worked together forming collections of the coleoptera and lepidoptera of North-Eastern Yorkshire; but exact scientific palaeontological nomenclature had not pre- viously constituted any part of my study. We had hitherto had nothing to guide us beyond the un- scientific volume of Young and Bird on the " Geology of the Yorkshire Coast." Phillips' accurate volume initiated an entirely new order of things. Many a time did I mourn over the publication of this book, and the consequences immediately resulting from it. Instead of indulging in the games and idleness to which most lads are prone, my evenings throughout a long winter were devoted to the detested labour of naming these miserable stones. Such is the short- sightedness of boyhood. Pursuing this uncongenial work gave me in my thirteenth year a thorough practical familiarity with the palaeontological trea- sures of Eastern Yorkshire. This early acquisition happily moulded the entire course of my future life. One of the grandest figures that ever frequented A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 13 Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the dis- tinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee- breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waist- coat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff — of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril — and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. Spending the greater portion of his morning in writing, towards noon he would slowly wend his way to the museum, where he always found in my father a friend with whom to gossip about the rocks of the Cotswolds, the clays of Kimmeredge, or the drainage of the Eastern Fens. He would expound in a Coleridgean fashion his ideas of their relation to the strata of Yorkshire and of the other parts of England. His walking pace never varied ; it was slow and dignified ; he was usually followed a few yards in the rear by his rose-cheeked partner in life. We have a thousand times contemplated the fine old man, who, amid his favourite haunts, thus laid the founda- tions of geological science. Smith's memory was most remarkable, especially in anything relative to his own life. On the occasion already referred to, when he and my father took Sir Roderick and Lady Murchison along the Yorkshire coast they parted company at Saltburn, the I4 REMINISCENCES OF Murchisons proceeding towards Brora in Scotland, where he had property on which he suspected the Oolitic strata existed, and for the investigation of which the practical lesson he had just received was a valuable preparation. Smith and my father returned on foot to Whitby, chatting very freely by the way. They had traversed many miles of picturesque and ever varying road, when they reached a point where it was about to make a small curve. They had already passed several similar ones, but on reaching the point in question, Smith said to my father : " It is now twenty-eight years "since I came along this road, but if I rightly "remember, when we turn that corner, we shall "see a small bridge over a brook." The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when the two were standing upon the bridge, with the brook brawling beneath their feet. The early part of the year 1831 was spent at Thornton, near Pickering, with the Rev. Thomas Irving, master of the small village grammar school. This was to me a delightful time. I made my way thither along with the son of a Scarborough trades- man who was already a pupil in the school, and our journey was characteristic, alike of the inexperience of boyhood and the lack of principle in stage coach officials. We travelled from Scarborough to Stain- ton, a distance of ten miles, by the York mail, on leaving which the guard came to me for the per- quisite, customary in those days. In my ignorance, A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 15 this being my first independent journey, though we had travelled only a single stage, instead of giving him the wonted sixpence, I felt it my duty to give, as he felt it his duty to take, and from a young, inexperienced lad, half a crown. But this was not our only folly ; we had to walk the five miles inter- vening between Stainton and Thornton, where tea would be awaiting us. But were we not on a journey, and did we not think it fine to do as we had heard of other travellers doing? ergo, we ordered tea to be prepared for us in the inn before starting on our walk. No tea we ever tasted was so delicious as this, which we ordered and paid for ourselves. Needing the tea or no was not any consideration, the luxury of being our own masters constituted the charm, though it cleared our pocket money. On entering upon the school work, I found my- self in an unwonted atmosphere. Hitherto, I, along with my class, had been accustomed to prepare sixty or seventy lines of Virgil within the space of an hour. The thing was not to be done by young, imperfectly taught lads. I had looked forward with dread to my first Latin task in the new school. This was soon given, and consisted of three lines of the ^^Eneid." I could not comprehend the meaning of so pleasant a change, but this meaning became clear when the class stood round Mr. Irving's desk. We were expected to understand, not only every word, but every syllable or letter of both the syntax and the i6' REMINISCENCES OF x, prosody in those three lines. This was a revelation to me of what true teaching meant, and at a later period the loss of it cost me many a tearful night. Two things in the history of that brief school-life are worth recording. We were entitled to two half holidays each week, but not on any fixed day. Hence, if a day was unusually fine we had only to ask, in order to have either the ordinary half-day or both halves rolled into one glorious whole. In such cases boys and ushers alike rejoiced in the rambles to distant woods and moors. These rambles in that lovely limestone region were indeed pleasures. I had brought to the school all nets and other entomo- logical apparatus for increasing the museum collec- tion of British insects, in which the district around Thornton was remarkably rich. A taste for such pursuits spread rapidly amongst the boys, and insect hunting soon became the popular occupation whenever we were free, even if for only half an hour. This happy time came to an end all too soon. At the close of June I returned to Scarborough, and then began another of the numerous breaks in my scholastic career. This lasted until the end of September, and the three months were again spent in collecting plants, birds, and fossils for the museum. My parents determined to send me next for a while into France; and having heard that the son of a Leeds merchant whose acquaintance my father had made, was at a school in Bourbourg, a small A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 17 town north-east of Calais, they decided I should also go. What followed is characteristic of two things not uncommon in those pre-railroad times — viz., lack of experience in travel; and along with costly postage a very considerable lack of cash. One of my mother's brothers occupied a respon- sible position in a merchant's warehouse which stood in Cheapside, at the corner of Wood Street, and my first business was to find my way to him. I had never before been more than twenty miles away from home. Under these circumstances, it would have been reasonable for my parents to have ascertained that my uncle was at home and could receive me, instead of pitching a raw young lad into the heart of London alone. The steamer "James Watt/' running between Leith and London, picked me up at Scarborough on the afternoon of the last Sunday in September 1831, and landed me at Blackwall early on Tuesday morning. I had then to reach London, a distance of several miles, and, knowing nothing of omnibuses or cabs, I stepped into the first vehicle I found on the Quay, which was a two-horse hackney coach, for which I had to pay seven-and-sixpence out of my thinly lined purse. On reaching my uncle's warehouse I received the paralysing information that he was in Scotland, and would not be home for some days. The steamer which was to convey me cheaply to Calais sailed from the Thames a little after noon, and meanwhile I had to go to the French Ambassador's office in B i8 REMINISCENCES OF •order to obtain a passport. The kind head of the firm with which my uncle was connected instructed me where to go to obtain this indispensable docu- ment. Following his direction, I found myself face to face with the French officials, who speedily informed me no passport could be granted to a lad like me, unless some older person was with me when making the application. I told them I could not wait, that I was leaving London by the steamer which sailed in an hour or two, but all in vain ; they were inexorable, and I had to make my way back to Cheapside, and inform my new friend of the failure of my mission. He then kindly accompanied me to the Passport 'Office, where my eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows were duly described on the stamped document which I then received. But meanwhile the steamer had sailed. I well remember my kind companion bringing me back to Cheapside, by a way which enabled me to see the celebrated Covent Garden Market, but on reaching his warehouse the important question arose, what was to be done? No other packet sailed from London to Calais until the suc- ceeding Friday. Meanwhile the merchant recom- mended me to take up my quarters at the well- known coaching house, the " Cross Keys " in Wood Street, just opposite the end of his own warehouse. 1 took possession of a poor but inexpensive attic and proceeded to review the situation. I soon arrived at the conclusion that my slender stock of A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 19 money would have entirely disappeared before Friday, leaving nothing wherewith to reach Calais and Bourbourg. Wretched beyond measure, and not knowing what to do, I threw myself down upon my bed, and then recollected having heard that when in trouble nothing afforded such consolation as reading the Bible! I at once extracted from my trunk one which my mother had put there, and proceeded to try the experiment ; with what result I cannot say. One thing, however, became clear to me, I must find some quicker way of reaching Calais than waiting for Friday's steamer. The landlord of the " Cross Keys" was called into consultation, and I learnt from him that a coach started from his office, at eight o'clock that evening, which would reach Dover early next morning. This was a much more costly route than the one by which I had intended to go, but there was no other way open to me that would not cost more still. In due time I was mounted on the top of the coach, which had scarcely cleared the suburbs of London when heavy rain began to fall, and long before we reached Canterbury I was soaked to the skin. We had a short delay at the posting house at that place, where we hoped to enjoy the luxury of hot coffee. But everywhere the fates pursued. We entered the inn only to find the waiting woman had overslept herself, and was at that moment applying a match to a large black coal fire, which altogether declined to be lighted, whilst 20 REMINISCENCES OF we remained shivering in the cold. We returned to our conveyance more starved than when we had descended from it, and terminated a wet and miserable journey only on reaching Dover. Then, and for many a long year afterwards, my highest ambition was for the time to arrive when I could afford to travel inside a stage coach. The journey from Calais to Bourbourg, a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles, had to be taken by cabriolet, a jingling one-horse vehicle. When about half way I saw near the road side a cabaret, whose sign announced that " Vin Ordinaire " was to be had within. Now, I had never tasted this notorious beverage, and thought I should like to do so. I therefore gave my cocher a franc, and told him to bring me as much as the coin would buy. To my astonishment he produced a huge jugful, the tenth part of which sufficed to satisfy my curiosity ; but he speedily disposed of the remainder. I arrived at the house of Monsieur Montieus, my future schoolmaster, about ten o'clock at night. The door was opened by a tall English usher, who of course wanted to know my errand. When I told him this, and that no letter had previously announced my coming, he asked where I was from, and when I gave him this piece of information he was still more astonished, discovering as he did that my parents lived within a few miles of his own Yorkshire home. Monsieur Montieus was summoned, and at once announced to me there was no vacancy in his school — a fresh addition to my A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 21 youthful disasters. But he proposed sending me to his father, the Abbe Montieus, who had a school some hundred miles south of Bourbourg. Unfortunately, I not only had no money left to pay the expense of so long a journey, but I had been compelled to spend ten shillings entrusted to me by friends of the Leeds boy. The case appeared desperate, but it was at last concluded I must remain where I was until my parents could be communicated with. I was, how- ever, presently told a vacancy could be found for me as parlour boarder, a sort of extra respectable class, which dined at a small table in the centre of the salle a manger, whilst the other boys were seated at tables ranged round the walls of the room. This upper crust had also the privilege of remaining in the salon on Sundays for dessert and French wine after the other boys had departed. To all this, however, although considerable extra fees were to be paid, my parents unfortunately con- sented. I soon found I was practically in an English school in France. Madame Montieus was an excellent English lady, the usher was the son of a Yorkshire farmer, and we had more English boys than French. Though a nominal fine was imposed upon every lad caught speaking other than French, we really talked little else than English. Sending English lads to learn French at schools of this type was common then, and may be so still. I can only marvel that any parents with a modicum of worldly wisdom 22 REMINISCENCES OF would do so. Had I been forwarded to the school of the Abbe Montieus all had been well, I might then have learnt some French ; as it was, I learnt nothing. Even the classical teaching was as different as pos- sible from that which a few months previously had stimulated my efforts at the Thornton school. I felt I was losing instead of gaining ground, and night after night, miserable and disheartened, I wept myself to sleep. A short experience showed me the social life of the school was domineered by a bully of a lad from Leeds, not the one for whom I should have brought ten shillings. Any boy who incurred the displeasure of this lad was at once by him cut off from intercourse with the rest of the school, and remained so until he chose to lift the ban. At first, two unfortunate coloured lads from the West Indies fell victims to thisioverbearing conduct. Then I and the only lad of any social position in the school, the son of one of the great London municipal families, fell under the tyrant's displeasure and were treated accordingly. We were for months cut off from our fellows, indeed until the day I left Bourbourg. How great the fear of this terrible lad had been, may be judged from the fact, that during all this time no one dared to acquaint Monsieur Montieus with what was going on. When, however, he, one of the very kindest of men, learned the state of things, the tyrant was deposed in disgrace. My own woeful experiences of a Continental school induces me to give a word of warning to parents who A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 23, even in this day, would send their children abroad, to ascertain very fully the kind of establishment to which they entrust the young ones. I left France,, having learnt little more of colloquial French than I brought with me, and not having gained any com- pensating advantage. CHAPTER II Visit to London — Murchison — Theatres — Return home — WeddelPs surgery— Surgery work— Carrying physic — Domestic life — Surgery cleaning — Doctors' bills — Dis- tribution of country bills — System of apprenticeship — Shooting and plant hunting — Awakening cords — Poly- trichum on Oliver's Mount — Memoir on rare birds — Fossil flora — Drawing on the kitchen table — WeddelPs botanical lectures — Staith's Excursion — Memoir to Geological Society — Fate of this memoir — Messrs. Tate and Blake's misrepresentation — Insect hunting — Nebria Livida— Second discovery of Nebria Livida — Pomerine Skua. AT the end of March 1832 I returned home. Instructions had, however, been sent to me to spend a few days in London, and especially to call upon my father's old friend, Sir Roderick Murchison, the distinguished geologist. This was to me a solemn business. Murchison, Sedgwick, Lyell, and Buckland were the deities of my geological Olympus. When, having been invited to breakfast with the great man, I stood upon his doorstep in Bryanston Place, I had scarcely courage to ring the door bell. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 25 I was, however, received in the kindest manner by my host and hostess. Lady Murchison was indeed one of the most charming of women, and her kindness to me on that occasion has been vividly remembered ever since. Sir Roderick took me down to the Museum of the Geological Society, then in Somerset House; I was there introduced to that excellent geologist, Mr. Lonsdale, then curator of the museum and assistant secretary of the Society. Many interest- ing things were shown to me, especially a remarkable fossil, brought by Murchison from Oehningen in Switzerland, well known to me as the fossil fox. The identification of such fossils in those days was not very exact, but having had at home representations of this specimen, which my father had received from its discoverer, along with a lithograph made from a sketch by Lady Murchison, of the Alpine valley in which it was found, I stood enchanted when the original creature, so often the subject of my geo- logical ponderings, was actually in my hands. Another event of my young life was an acquaint- ance with some of the London theatres. I had been from earliest childhood trained to an appreciation of fine acting ; indeed, several members of my mother's family were amateur dramatic artists of no mean order. In Scarborough I had seen Charles Young as Hamlet, the elder Kean as Richard III., Charles Kemble as the Hunchback, and Braham as Tom Bowling. I now saw Liston as Paul Pry, Fanny Kemble in "Francis First," Madame Taglioni in 26 REMINISCENCES OF " The Shadow Dance/' and Madame Vestris in " The Cork Leg." I heard Lablache sing "L'Elixir d'Amour," and lastly, I saw O'Keefe in " High Life Below Stairs."* On reaching home, I found arrangements had been made to place me as medical student with Mr. Thomas Weddell, a rising general practitioner in Scarborough. The direct results of this arrange- ment were of a varied character, some good, others the reverse. But several events occurred during the three years I occupied that position which materially influenced my future life. Meanwhile the general circumstances of students destined for the medical profession in provincial towns were, at the beginning of the century, so different from anything existing now, that I propose to put some of these conditions on record, if only to show to medical students now living how great are the advantages which they enjoy, compared with those of their representatives of half a century ago. On being transferred to this new sphere, I found an older student of the name of Hopper, son of the proprietor of the well-known Bell Hotel of the town. The day on which I entered upon my duties was significant of what was to follow. A consider- able part of the day was spent at a big pestle and * Dr. Williamson enjoyed to within six months of his death describing these scenes. To his mind no danseuse equalled these old ones, and not even Toole's Paul Pry was quite equal to the one he knew. — A. C. W. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 27 mortar with which divers medicaments had to be hammered and brayed, until the bulk could be passed through a fine hair sieve. Then came pre- parations of certain infusions, in which senna leaves, gentian roots, rose leaves, etc., had severally to be put into jugs, which were filled with boiling water and tightly closed. During the day the Governor, as I found Mr. Weddell was always designated, occasionally called at the surgery to order medicines that happened to be wanted immediately. But the great time for work began about six o'clock in the evening, when the physic-making for the day took place. At that time few patients, excepting such as lived in the~ country, and whose visits involved the hire of a horse, paid for anything beyond the cost of medi- cines which they received. Payment for visits was almost unknown among second-rate general practi- tioners in provincial towns. Such practitioners were paid for their services by the sale of drugs, which their patients must swallow. As my governor had a very large practice among the middle and lower classes of a maritime fishing town such as Scarborough then was, the number of draughts and mixtures to be compounded, pills to be rolled, ointments to be rubbed up, and blisters and plasters to be spread, made the two or three hours after six o'clock a busy time. Even when all this was accomplished, the day's work was not done. On my first evening I had to accompany the senior *& REMINISCENCES OF pupil on a tour round the town, when we distributed these said medicines to the houses of the several patients for whom they were destined — a journey from which we returned only as the clock struck ten. I then learnt another fact : our governor was a bachelor, whose only servant was also practically housekeeper, and lived in a large, comfortable cellar kitchen. We pupils took breakfast, dinner, and tea in the dining-room along with the governor ; but on our return from the physic-distributing tour, I found the evenings, all work finished, were to be spent in the kitchen with our housekeeper-servant. Our bedroom was an attic at the top of the house ; so far as sleeping was concerned, comfortable enough, but when morning dawned, new social lights dawned also. Our attic contained no provision whatever of the lavatory kind ; for the performance of all such functions we must descend to a brick-floored cellar in the basement of the house and behind the kitchen, where not only our toilet was performed, but where, in addition, I found we had to clean our own boots. We had also, before breakfast, to sweep the surgery floor. The second day was pretty much a repetition of the first, save that my journey of the previous even- ing was supposed to have made me familiar with the addresses of all the patients ; hence I was installed in the honourable office of errand boy, vice Hopper resigned. The house had two sitting-rooms — one behind the . An outside covered passage ran alongside these A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 29- parlours and led to an area, partly yard, partly garden behind, in which was the so-called surgery. Halfway up this passage was the kitchen entrance, over which an oil lamp hung from the ceiling, though this was the only lobby lamp of the house ; because the way to the surgery passed under it, the care and trimming of this oil lamp was deemed another of the varied duties of the " medical student." The arrival of Saturday revealed a further extension of those duties. All the bottles, jars, and other recep- tacles of drugs were to be taken down, cleaned, and, if need be, refilled, and the shelves dusted ; whilst the last duty at night, after clearing away all dis- orderly indications of the day's work, was to rub the top of the counter with beeswax and turpentine, that it might present a shining face on the Sabbath. This Saturday evening duty was fulfilled by me weekly, without omission, during the whole of the three years in which I occupied my position in the surgery. Though essentially an errand boy, I did not carry the traditional " basket ; " hence coats with a super- abundance of sportsmen's pockets were a necessary portion of our outfit. But this arrangement was not wholly satisfactory ; it had its dangers. Not un- frequently the young folks of both sexes familiar with our duties contrived, by well-timed "accidents," as we went on our way, roughly to jostle us, in the not always futile hope of smashing one of the physic bottles with which these pockets were known to be stuffed. A second difficulty not unfrequently sprang .30 REMINISCENCES OF from this plan : from time to time the ringing of the surgery bell whilst I was enjoying my supper and rest announced that some small box of pills, or packet of powders, promised by the governor to a patient had not arrived. It had probably lurked, over- looked, at the bottom of one of my many capacious pockets. Occasionally the omitted delivery was not -discovered until the governor made his professional visit the succeeding day. On his return to the sur- gery, a frowning brow indicated thunder in the air, and the explosion usually took the shape of " H'm ! At At your old trade of basket-making, sir ? " I heard the phrase too often not at once to feel my various pockets in search of the missing powder or bolus. The middle of November brought fresh work. On St. Martin's Day domestic and farm servants in the east of Yorkshire not unfrequently changed their situations ; and as we had a considerable number of patients in this class, we were obliged to be careful their "bills" were delivered before they left their temporary home and were lost sight of by us for ever. This November bill-work was, however, but the pilot-balloon of what had to be undertaken during December. In those days the length of a doctor's bill was proverbial. Nowadays the patient receives from his doctor a polite note intimating " the amount due for professional attendance," and as the greater part even of this brief communication is elegantly A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 31 lithographed, the business of making out the Christ- mas bills is easily performed. It was seriously otherwise in my day. The ledger account recorded every pill, powder, or other healing medicament that had been delivered to the patient during the entire year ; hence, when the household was both large and sickly, the length of the bill was literally a great one. But length was not the only evil for us poor students. After adding half a column of minute items, the result as shown by the bill did not always correspond with those given in the ledger. In these cases the whole affair had to be overhauled, to learn where and why the dis- crepancy existed ; and as this happened probably in one long bill out of every three, the toil thus super- added was no joke. But when this labour was successfully accom- plished, and every bill lay neatly folded, the end was not fulfilled. Even the distribution of these yearly accounts devolved upon the junior pupil. The town bills easily reached their destination, but the country ones were a graver consideration. They involved two journeys, each of a day, on horseback. Un- fortunately, I was no equestrian, and so journeyed from village to village, wondering as I went, how long it would be before my horse and its rider took different views of their respective duties. At last the question was settled. As I was leaving the village of Seamer at nightfall, on my way to Aytoun, my steed pitched me over his head, and stood quietly 32 REMINISCENCES OF and contemptuously gazing at me as I lay on my back in the mud. Many of the duties which I have referred to, and which ought chiefly to have been performed by an errand-boy, are easily explained when the time and circumstances are remembered. Mr. Weddell had originally been chemist and druggist, and entered the profession when the Apothecaries' Act of 1815 afforded facilities for men in similar positions to become regular practitioners. He, and all such, brought with them into their new position ideas associated with the system of appren- ticeship to retail trades in shops. Lads thus appren- ticed must of course perform these menial tasks, and time was required to bring about a more enlightened arrangement, suitable to the better educated youths who entered the medical profession at later periods. Still, although we learnt little of our profession that could not have been mastered in a few weeks spent in an apothecary's shop, the three years of " medical studentship " in Scarborough were not without redeeming features, in- the abundant open- air exercise which I was partly compelled, partly permitted, to take. During the spring and summer months the coast north of Scarborough was fre- quented by various sandpipers and other wading and aquatic birds. The North Bay itself was then a much more retired nook than it now is. The construction of the pier and the stone embank- ment have drawn away many of the birds, then so much more abundant than they now are. We were A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 33 frequently out with our guns at dawn, and many valuable birds still in the museum at Scarborough were obtained during these early rambles. On other occasions we were plant-hunting. I was then forming a collection of the plants of Eastern York- shire, as well as trying to master the natural classification which was already beginning to supplant the Linnaean method, so long the one universally adopted. Many of our best collecting grounds were at a distance, and we often started on our journey before daybreak; in this a little practical diffi- culty had to be overcome. Having frequently a companion on these excursions, we were not always able to leave our beds simultaneously. For this we invented a remedy; each of us provided a long string, one end of which was tied round the sleeper's wrist, whilst the other was flung out of the window, and could be reached by any person out- side ; thus the first to rise was able to arouse his companion. From time to time the ludicrous side of our arrangement became manifest. When neither of us awoke at the time arranged for, these strings hung down the front of our respective houses until the servants of the neighbourhood were on the move; and they, having become familiar with our plans, took care vigorously to arouse us. One of these mornings was to me a somewhat interesting one. The nature and functions of the stamens and pistils of each flowering plant were c 34 REMINISCENCES OF then well known to every student, but no one had yet discovered organs with similar functions in any of the cryptogamic forms of vegetation, and I was ambitious of making this discovery. Resting after a long ramble on the brow of Oliver's Mount, I found close within my reach a fine tuft of the well- known moss, Polytrichum commune. On examining some of these objects with my pocket lens, I dis- covered at the apex of each stem a lovely little cup, formed of small coloured leaflets, and which looked very like minute flowers. I wondered whether or not the organs so many botanists were in search of were enclosed within that little cup ; and, indeed, it was in such a cup they were found years afterwards by Hoffmeister, Unger, and others, who followed in their steps. I little dreamed that what I was in search of was actually under my eyes ; but these reproductive organs of the cryptogams differ alto- gether in form and aspect from those of the flower- ing plant, though functionally identical. The labours of many men who were led into the right path by Suminski and Hoffmeister were needed to clear the mysteries by which the subject was invested. During the earlier part of my student life I for- warded to the Zoological Society of London a memoir on the rare birds found in the vicinity of Scarborough. This was one of the earliest of my attempts at drawing up a scientific memoir, still, some of the facts recorded in it were subsequently referred to by Yarrell in his " History of the A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 35 41 Birds of Great Britain." But I was soon called to another, a more enduring piece of work. Previous to the third decade of the nineteenth century, very little was known respecting the vegetation of the Oolitic age, but the discovery of a small esturian deposit of plants in Gristhorpe Bay made great additions to our information on this subject. There have always been discussions respecting the share which the two cousins, William Bean and my father, were entitled to claim in this discovery; that the subsequent development of it was pro- secuted chiefly by them is indisputable. In March 1832 the publication of Lindley and Hutton's " Fossil " Flora of Great Britain " was commenced ; and shortly afterwards Mr. Dunn, then secretary to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Scarborough, received a letter from Mr. Hutton, inquiring if there was any one in the town capable of figuring and describing the new plants of the Gristhorpe deposit. Mr. Dunn brought this letter to me, and urged me to undertake the task. I did so, and contributed to the pages of that work almost as long as its quarterly parts continued to be issued. At length the issue ceased, because, as Mr. Lindley himself told me, the geologists did not give the work that financial support which he had hoped, whilst he as botanist did not feel called upon to spend his money upon a publication that, after all, was mainly a geological one. So far as my own communications to it are concerned, some of the palaeontologists 36 REMINISCENCES OF familiar with its pages may be amused to learn that most of my drawings were prepared at one end of Mr. Weddell's kitchen-table, whilst the housekeeper was occupied at the other end with the several pro- cesses of providing the day's dinner. But this was not my only invitation into new botanical work. Mr. Weddell had undertaken to deliver lectures at the Mechanics' Institution on vegetable physiology, and he asked me to prepare for him a set of diagrams illustrating the subject. My own knowledge was then too small to enable me to do this without reading. At that time almost the only popular English book on vegetable physi- ology was Mrs. Marcett's "Conversations"; hence it was to this elementary publication that I applied myself. The result was the acquisition of a taste which I never subsequently lost. A short holiday which my father and I devoted to a geological excursion along the coast, between Robin Hood's Bay and Skinningrave, produced also permanent results. I knew fairly well the general features of the ground over which we proposed to work, as well as Smith's views respecting the identification of each larger group of strata by means of the fossils which it contained. Observations made during this excursion showed me that Smith's generalisations did not embrace all the facts of the case. Whilst working among the beds of the Upper Lias, which on the York- A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 37 shire coast consist of three very distinct super- imposed layers, I became convinced that the fossils characteristic of that stratum were not distributed indiscriminately throughout its entire thickness. I found that, though each of these three layers was well distinguished by its lithological structure, the distinction became much more marked when we examined the fossils which each of them contained. Thus the fossil wood known as Whitby jet, with which even the Romans were familiar, is obtained almost wholly from the middlemost of these three layers, and I observed that many other of the Lias fossils had their respective zones, in which alone they were to be found. Struck with these facts, I proceeded to investi- gate the coast strata between the Lias and the Cornbrash, and I found here similar conditions. I embodied these observations in two papers, which were read before the Geological Society of London, one on the Liassic Strata on May Qth, 1834, and the other on the Oolitic Rocks, November 2nd, 1836. These two memoirs were ultimately united by the Society, and published in a single memoir in their " Transactions." We shall, I think, shortly see why this was done. Towards the end of 1836, and almost simul- taneously with the receipt of my second memoir, a short but carefully prepared paper by Mr. Louis Hunton, a hitherto unknown author, was forwarded to the Society and shortly afterwards read. This 38 REMINISCENCES OF paper was entitled : " Accompanying Remarks to a " Section of the Upper Lias and Marlstone of York- " shire, showing the Limited Vertical Range of the " species of Ammonites and other Testacea, with "their Value as Geological Tests." This memoir obviously dealt with part of the series of strata that had been the subject of my first paper, read two and a half years previously. The author was evidently ignorant of my memoir, but he had arrived at conclusions identical with those which I had announced in May 1834. This contribution of Mr. Hunton's was at once printed, as was my second communication, but oddly enough the latter was tacked on to the end of my first paper, which had lain neglected in one of the Society's pigeon-holes. There is no great difficulty in realising what must have occurred. In 1834, either through the influence of the Pre- sident, or because the Council shared his esti- mate of the small value of my communication, the latter was thrown overboard as not deserving to be published. When, in 1836 a new observer, ignorant of what I had done, reported to them the existence of con- ditions which they had in practice previously refused to admit on my authority, they now felt obliged to publish his paper, and doing so compelled them in common justice to publish mine also. The arrival of my second paper gave them the opportunity for this and the separate productions of Hunton and A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 39 Mjndf now rest side by side in the SUM volume of their " Transactions." In 1876 Messrs. Tate and Blake published their work on the Yorkshire Lias, in which they not only confirmed but considerably extended the conclusions at which I had arrived in 1834. But here again a trivial arrangement on the part of the Geological Society led into an unintentional injustice to me. In printing our memoirs, the Society placed Mr. Hunton's name in front of mine. This seems to have suggested to the two authors the idea of Mr. Hunton's priority. Commenting on our observations on page 6 of their work, they say : " In 1836, in VoL V. of the second series of the "'Geological Transactions' were published two " papers ; Ike first by Louis Hunton, 'Accompanying "'Remarks to a Section of the Upper Lias and Mari- " ' stone of Yorkshire, showing the Limited Vertical "'range of the species of Ammonites and other "'Testacea, with their value as Geological Tests.* "This paper contains very valuable information "upon a limited portion of the series and is the u first attempt to do what we have undertaken in the "present work, namely, to localise the fossils in "their various horizons. In the second paper by " W. C Williamson, ' on the Distribution of Fossil " ' Remains on the Yorkshire Coast,' the same work " is attempted for the whole of the Lias, and the more " easily acquired facts are accurately laid down." Messrs. Tate and Blake thus credit Mr. Hunton 40 REMINISCENCES OF with priority over me, whereas I had, as already shown, preceded him by two years and a half. My friend, Professor Judd, now President of the Geological Society, has suggested to me another and more kindly explanation of the delay in the publication in question. In those days fewer papers were published than now, and the quarto volumes of " Geological " Transactions " did not appear at regular intervals. Hence the possibility that my memoirs may have been read during such an interval between the pub- lication of two volumes and had to wait until the next was ready for the press. Still later I applied the same method of investiga- tion to rocks yet higher in the series, viz., the Corn- brash, the Kelloway Rocks, and the Oxford Clay. This inquiry and its results were embodied in a third memoir, read on May Qth, 1838, and published in the " Transactions " shortly afterwards. Subse- quent researches have established the fact that very thin zones of stratified rocks are often identified, even by the presence of some single fossil, and such horizontal zones are now recognised as having great practical value. During my medical studentship my father and I acquired considerable knowledge of the Birds and Insects of Eastern Yorkshire. In the latter branch of study we had made one fortunate discovery. We had early collected a single specimen of a beetle unknown to us, and were unable to learn the name until we found in Curtis's " British Ento- A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 4* "mology/'on plate 6, a figure and description of our insect. It proved to be Nebria Livida. The writer stated that an extremely small number — I think three or four isolated examples — had been collected on the Lincolnshire coast. We wholly failed to recollect where we had obtained our single specimen. Long afterwards, we were working amongst the rocks of Cornbrash, which, fallen from a higher part of the precipitous cliff, were then strewn in considerable numbers over the sandy shore of the south-eastern corner of the north bay of Scarborough. Turning over one of these blocks, my eye quickly detected a " Nebria " running out of the depressed sand upon which the stone had rested. Securing my prize, I quickly joined my father, and showed him my cap- tured treasure. We then remembered that this was the place where we had obtained our original specimen. It was long before other localities were discovered from which the insect could be obtained in any numbers ; and since it re-appeared at ours every summer, until the bridge and embankment ruined the spot, we were able to supply the needs of our entomological friends. On another occasion we were out in a boat with a friend to obtain specimens of "Terns" or sea swallows, that were flying in the bay. Whilst thus occupied, we noticed two or three Skua gulls amongst the Terns. Skua gulls are birds that do not catch their own fish, but mingle with others that are doing so ; and, when one of the latter has been 42 A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST successful, the Skua immediately gives chase to him, and makes him disgorge his prey, which prey the Skua catches before it reaches the water. But on shooting one of these buccaneers of the sea, they were unable to identify it with any of the known forms of Arctic birds. Further examination, how- ever, showed it to be a new species of the genus now known as Pomerine Skua. CHAPTER III Story of tumulus — Ransom and Binion's visit to Scar- borough— Dr. Phillips' visit — Peak Hill journey — My leaving Scarborough discussed — York mail — Invitation to and appointment in Manchester — Science in East Yorkshire — Nature of coast — Chalk and Speeton clay — • Judd — Oolites and Lias — Early abundance of fossils, Kettleness ammonites, &c. — Modern scarcity — Opera- tive collectors — Rudd and Peter — Young and- Bird's book — Young's ignorance — Rise of Phillips and the York circle — Scientific men at Hull, Leeds, Whitby, Newcastle, Durham, and Berwick. ANOTHER branch of study occupied me during my medical apprenticeship. In the early part of this century a large amount of attention was being paid both in Great Britain and Ireland, as well as in Denmark and other northern parts of Europe, to antique remains, especially the tumuli, then so abun- dant. These researches were promoted at home by Sir Richard Cole Hoare at this early period ; and later by Canon Greenwell, of Durham. East York- shire was particularly rich in these relics of a bygone age. One fine example of a tumulus or place of interment had been known to exist on the 44 REMINISCENCES OF margin of Gristhorpe Cliff, overhanging the sea at Gristhorpe Bay, a few miles to the south of Scar- borough. On July loth or nth, 1834, this tumulus was opened by W. Beswick, Esq., the owner of the property on which it was located. He was accom- panied by a few friends, of whom my father was one. Its contents proved to be of the utmost interest. The first object which presented itself to the eyes of the excavators was the trunk of a large oak tree laid horizontally at about six feet from the surface of the ground. On using proper tackle for raising this object, only the upper part of it came away, leaving the lower portion embedded in clay. It now became evident this was the trunk of an oak tree, split lengthwise, and retaining its bark, which, after having been cut down, had been hol- lowed, converting it into a rude coffin. During his long career as archaeologist, Sir Richard Colt Hoare had met with only one similar example in Great Britain, though such coffins are more fre- quently found in the Scandinavian districts, especi- ally in South Jutland ; and others like it were subse- quently met with in our own country. Most if not all of these tree interments appear to have belonged to the Bronze Age. The coffin was half filled with water. The embedded portion was now taken up, and its contents carefully removed. The entire collection of objects, coffin included, was ultimately transferred to the Scarborough Museum, to which institution A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 45. it was presented by Mr. Beswick. Special attention was at once given to the bones of the skeleton, which were in an extremely rotten condition, owing to the decay and disappearance of the membranous parts, which when present hold together the calcareous elements. It was then suggested, probably by Dr. Harland, one of the most intelligent of the medical men then residing in the town, that these bones should be carefully washed and put into a common laundry boiler filled with a thin solution of glue. This was done, the fire lit and carefully watched, that the precious bones should not be injured by any too- violent ebullition. It fell to my lot to undertake this part of the proceedings. The bones were abso- lutely black, the effect apparently of the tannic or gallic acid contained in the bark of the oak tree, and which had combined with the iron of the clay in which the coffin was embedded. The process of boiling was continued for about eight hours, after which the bones were carefully ex- posed to the air, to allow the gelatine to harden. After this, they were articulated as readily as recent bones could have been. The original owner of these bones proved to have been a fellow about six feet in height ; that he was an old man was indicated by the advanced ossification of some of the cartilages of the skeleton, and by the surfaces of his teeth being worn away to an almost uniform flatness ; in all other respects the teeth were in a state of perfect preservation ; the 46 REMINISCENCES OF old fellow had obviously never needed the services of a dentist. Amongst other objects found in the coffin were a bronze spearhead, three flints, and two beautifully worked bone objects. One of these was a pin, and the other apparently part of the handle of a dagger or knife, which had evidently been fastened to the end of a wooden shaft by three pins, which had passed completely through both the bone and the wood. Soon after this discovery was made, it was intimated to me by some of my friends that it was my duty to write an illustrated account of the matter. This I did to the best of my power, though the under- taking of such a task by a youth, who had not yet reached his eighteenth year, was rather appalling. However, the thing was done, and the memoir published at Scarborough before the end of the year. It happened that shortly after this pamphlet appeared the late Professor Buckland paid a visit to the town and obtained a copy of the memoir, with which he seemed to be much pleased ; but I heard no more of the matter until the weekly issue of the Literary Gazette for October i8th, 1834, was forwarded to me by some unknown hand. On opening the number I found that, unlike its usual form, nearly an entire half had been devoted to the recapitulation of part of my archaeological bantling, and the number for the succeeding week contained the repro- duction, in like manner, of the remaining half. No mention was made of how it reached the editor's A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 47 hands, beyond some associated observations and allusions to my youthful geological pursuits. These caused me to write to the great Oxford Professor, thanking him for his kind action. At that time many of my contributions had been published in Lindley and Hutton's " Fossil Flora," and I presume he had these in his mind when, in a letter replying to mine, he said : " I was much gratified at seeing that the " editor of the Literary Gazette took the same view "that I had done of your interesting account of " the British tumulus, and am happy to have " been instrumental in bringing before the public a " name to which I look forward as likely to figure in " the annals of British science. I trust you will not " fail to receive in your native town that encourage- " ment which strangers, so far as their means extend, " are ready to proffer to you." It may readily be conceived how great an impression the receipt of a communication like this, from so eminent a man, would make upon its youthful recipient. I can, how- ever, distinctly remember that it did not feed my vanity half so much as it aroused within me a deep yet encouraging sense of my responsibility, and also a resolute determination that opinions of me held by Buckland and Murchison should not be disappointed. The letter of Dr. Buckland was one of those influences the effect of which was unmitigatedly healthy. A second edition of this memoir was called for a few years after its first appearance, and to my surprise a third was wanted in 1871. 48 REMINISCENCES OF In my preface to this latter issue, I said : " No " department of science has made more rapid advances " than archaeology during the last thirty years ; and it " was obvious to me that the crude production of a "youth of seventeen, published in 1834, was altogether " unfit for republication in 1 87 1 . I decided therefore " to rewrite the greater portion of the memoir, and " thus bring it into harmony with the present state of " our knowledge on the subject to which it refers." In the summer of 1835 an apparently trivial but really important circumstance occurred ; I received a message from my father, informing me there were two gentlemen at the museum who wished to see me. I went, and found there Mr. Ransome, surgeon of the Manchester Infirmary, and Mr. Binion, his brother-in-law, then one of the partners in the old established firm of calico printers in Manchester, known as John Hoyle & Sons. Both these gentlemen were members of the Society of Friends. I showed them some features of geological interest in the rocks constituting the picturesque Castle Hill of Scarborough. They afterwards invited me to sup with them at their hotel, in order, as they expressed it, to have a little interchange of ideas. During the evening this interchange was commenced by Mr. Ransome saying rather abruptly : " William Williamson, thou " must not remain at Scarborough ; it is no place for "thee to spend thy life in." Startled by the suggestion, I could only point out, that I saw no other course A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 49 open to me. After a few additional remarks of the same kind, the subject was dropped. At that time there resided in Scarborough an independent gentle- man, Mr. John Bury, who had originally been a merchant in Manchester. Having now no special occupation, he took considerable interest in the museum, and though making no pretence whatever at being a scientific man, he was ever ready to accom- pany us on our scientific excursions. A few weeks after the Ransome episode he one day called at the surgery to tell me that an influential phy- sician from Manchester was about to spend a few days at his house, and that he wished me to join their dinner circle on the following day. On arriving at Mr. Bury's house, I found Dr. Chas. Phillips, one of the physicians to the Manchester Infirmary, who also took consider- able interest in geological and biological subjects. In order to obtain some knowledge of the geology of the Yorkshire coast, we arranged an excursion for the following day among the Liassic rocks of the Peak Hill and Robin Hood's Bay. During that day, the inadequacy of Scarborough to supply me with a future career was again urged by Dr. Phillips. There had evidently been some communication between him and my former visitors from Manchester; but, so far as I was concerned, my views underwent no change. I told him that two years remained before my apprenticeship to Mr. Weddell would expire, and I must complete my medical education, in order to live. He then told me they wanted a D 50 REMINISCENCES OF curator for a season at the museum of the Manchester Natural History Society, and, that if I would go, it need make no serious break in my preparations for a medical career, because Mr. Ransome, my previous visitor, was prepared to have my indenture trans- ferred from Mr. Weddell to himself, without any fee, by which arrangement great medical privileges would be available to me in Manchester. But all was in vain. I was so stupidly wedded to the idea that it was my fate to remain in Scarborough that I declined even to entertain the proposition. Thus the move- ment Manchesterwards apparently again terminated. But now came one of those trivial so called accidents, far from uncommon in life, and that are so often turning points. A day or two later I was carrying a bottle of medicine to a patient who resided out- side " The Bar." On approaching this venerable structure, I saw the York mail standing at the door of Millar's Inn, to pick up a passenger. Hearing some one call my name, I looked up and discovered Dr. Phillips on the top of the coach. He inquired whether my views had undergone any change ; but before I had time to answer his query, the coach started. Shouting hastily back, he asked, " May I write to you ? " Seeing no reason why he should not do that, I simply nodded assent, and in another moment the coach was alike out of sight and out of hearing. This little incident, so accidentally brought about, was scarcely remembered by me, until one day my A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 51 father brought me a letter, just arrived from Dr. Phillips, which reopened in a definite way the subject of my removal. Thus the mere chance of my passing a certain point where a coach was standing but for a couple of minutes determined my future career. The letter in question invited me to meet the Council of the Manchester Natural History Society on an appointed day, for the consideration of my election to the curatorship of their museum. This summons brought matters to a decision. The invitation, coming in so definite a shape, was duly considered in a friendly council with Mr. Weddell, who, unwilling to let his own interests interfere with mine, offered to resign my indentures of apprentice- ship. So, on the day fixed, I found myself face to face with the Manchester council, by whom I was at once appointed to the curatorship, and entered upon the duties of my office towards the close of September 1835. It may not be undesirable at this point to sketch rapidly the scientific researches that were in pro- gress in North-Eastern Britain during the earlier part of the present century. As may naturally be expected, the young science of Geology came promi- nently to the front, for two reasons. This was the field hitherto comparatively neglected, but which now held out the greatest promise of reward to its investigators. The labours of Smith had furnished students of the science with definite standards, especially based on observations made in 52 REMINISCENCES OF the south and south-west of England, as to the succession of strata occurring on the island. Hence these two districts, the south-west and north-east, needed only competent observers to determine what position the rocks by which he was surrounded held in the vertical section published by the great teacher. A second stimulus to active research was fur- nished by the physical conditions of the long coast line, extending from the H umber to the Scottish border. Smith had called attention to the fact that the " Eastern side of the Island is, therefore, best " for the commencement of regular observations on " the organised fossils which are illustrative of its " geology" (" Strata Identified," p. 2). The uppermost of the series of the regularly stratified rocks was the chalk. That fossiliferous beds existed above, and of more recent origin than this cretaceous stratum was expected ; but years were to pass before any attempt was made to classify and determine their exact order and superposition. Hence, as I have just observed, the series, the succession of which had been practically determined by Smith,. began with the chalk of Flamborough Head, the inland outcrop of which was readily traced along the sweeping undulations of the Yorkshire wolds, forming the western boundary of the Vale of York. In Filey Bay there crops out from under the chalk a vast mass of blue clay, the common representative of a series of strata much A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 53 more distinctly separated, and consequently classified in the South of England than on this coast. It was only in 1 868 that the genius, energy, and accurate knowledge of my friend Professor Judd, of the southern representatives of the Speeton clays, enabled him to divide them into the several zones which correspond with the several Neocomian strata of the south, resting upon representatives of the Kim- meridge clay and even of the Portland beds. These two latter bring us to the Oolitic series of rocks, which commence more conspicuously at Filey Brig, and extend northwards, in an almost unbroken series, as far as the lofty crags of Rocliffe, where they rest upon the magnificent Liassic series, commencing at the Peak Hill, at the southern end of Robin Hood's Bay, and only terminating north- wards at Saltburn. A more attractive field of research for the young geologist of the period than that which I have traced could not be found in any part of England. Nearly all the strata thus briefly referred to abounded in fossil remains. It is otherwise now. Inland, each stratum is doubtless as richly supplied as in the past : with this difference, that they are, as a rule, accessible only in quarries and railroad cuttings, whereas the precipices and slopes of the long coast line made them more or less accessible at every point. But further, ages had rolled by, during which no attention whatever was paid to these objects. Hence, even the shore gravels were full of 54 REMINISCENCES OF them. In my youthful days, in a casual walk from the stream flowing under the cliff-bridge to the Spa, a space not exceeding a quarter of a mile, I could have collected half a dozen of the ammonites of Whitby and Staithes, brought southwards by the forces that accumulated the clays and gravels of the Drift. I well remember one occasion when my father and I, walking between Sands End and Kettle- ness, came to a broad, flat scar, left bare by the retiring tide, rich in fossils. Many of these fossils of the Upper Lias, of which division the scar consisted, were contained in hard spherical con- cretions, and on approaching the Kettleness Alum Works, we found the scar studded with round balls, which were half embedded in blue shale. A large number of these balls contained the well-known ammonites of the Liassic beds, but from others there projected the solid pointed end of a belemnite, known as the guard or rostrum, whilst, on splitting open the attached spherical concretion, we found in it the broad chambered part of the object known as the phragmacone. In the course of little more than an hour, we filled our two baskets, as well as con- verted our handkerchiefs into bags, and before we reached the summit of the Kettleness cliff, on our way to our resting-place for the night, we found that our burdens were quite as much as our strength enabled us to carry. I refer to this expedition to illustrate the abundance with which fossils could be A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 55 obtained in those days on various parts of the York- shire coast. In more recent times I have travelled over the same ground without discovering a single fossil worth carrying away. On one late occasion, when twitting one of my Scarborough friends with the absence of the geological energies displayed by the townsmen of my earlier days, he retorted very truthfully, " It is all very well for you fellows to " reprove us in that way, seeing that you cleared " the coast so completely that you left us nothing "to do." Besides my father and Mr. Bean, we had at Scarborough in those days a class of working men who devoted most of their time to collecting these fossils for sale. One called Rudd or Reed, and another whom we always recognised by the name of Irish Peter, were long known as the most skilful of their class, and who also well knew the worth of a new fossil when they found one. It was mainly by the labours of these two men that Mr. Leckenby brought together the fine collection of Oolitic fossils afterwards purchased by Sedgwick, and now in the Cambridge Museum. There were at the same time a few similar men in the coast towns of Bridlington, Filey, and Whitby. But at the latter place Messrs. Young and Bird, the former geologist the latter artist, were also accumulating the collection now preserved in the Whitby Museum, and writing the work which in 1822 they published conjointly, under the name of "A Geological Survey of the 56 REMINISCENCES OF "Yorkshire Coast." The competence of Young to write such a book may be judged by the following quotation from it : " Instead of assigning such high antiquity to the " whole of the strata, why may we not rather " suppose that a great proportion of them, particu- " larly such as contain organic remains, might be " formed at the era of the Deluge ? We are far " from adopting on this subject the crude opinions " of Dr. Woodward ; yet we are persuaded that he "and Mr. Howard and others who ascribe to the " Deluge the principal changes which the crust of "our globe has undergone, in so far come nearer " the truth than those who would throw back those " changes into long ages that preceded the creation "of man, involving them in the darkness of the "chaos." This quotation is a fair example of the prejudiced rubbish with which the true men of science had to contend. At the same time, Bird, a most amiable artist, prepared some coarse but other- wise recognisable figures of many of the more common of the East Yorkshire fossils, and the diagrams of the strata from Spurn Head to Hartle- pool gave a fair outline of the coast, with its rocky foreshore and its " Hinter " land of Yorkshire hills. Contemporaneously with Young and Bird, John Phillips, a youth of very different calibre, the nephew and constant companion of William Smith, was laying the foundations of a most profound know- ledge of the same subject. At this time there A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 57 existed in York a strong body of scientific men : The Reverend William Venables Vernon, afterwards Vernon Harcourt ; Thomas Allis, the ornithologist ; the three Backhouses, botanists and horticulturists ; Drs. Beckwith and Belcombe, Mr. James Cooke, Dr. G. Goldie, Jonathan Gray, and Daniel Tuke, all interested according to their several tastes in scientific work. Fortunately, alike for themselves and for John Phillips, they appointed him keeper of the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. At or very nearly the same time, John Edward Lee and William Hey Dykes of Hull, E. G. George of Leeds, and Mr. Ripley of Whitby were prosecuting similar scientific studies. Thus, these towns became centres from which a scientific impetus diffused itself throughout Eastern Yorkshire. I have already referred to the publication by John Phillips of the first part of his " Illustrations of the " Geology of Yorkshire," and its effects upon my own taste and life. Under such a combination of influences, no wonder that in crossing the county border, we find at Newcastle another cluster of eminent workers. The centre of an important coal district was sure to be supplied with eminent colliery engineers, and we found them in such men as Buddie and Sopworth. William Hutton, one of the authors of the " Fossil Flora of Great Britain," was the local authority on fossil plants. William Hewitson was then publishing his beautiful work on " Eggs °f the British Birds," as well as laying the 58 A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST foundations for his superb collection of British and foreign butterflies ; Joshua Alder and Albany Hancock were writing their "Investigations of the " Nudibranchiate Molluscs " ; John Hancock was steadily rising to be a high authority on British birds, and to be one of the most accomplished taxidermists that Great Britain has ever known ; and William Bowman was the local representative of the English botanists : a galaxy of distinguished men rarely equalled in any provincial town. At the same time we had at Durham Professor Johnson, the leader in all questions of Agricultural Chemistry, and but a little further north, Berwick was the home of Johnstone, the author of the " History of British "Zoophytes." CHAPTER IV Difficulties in the Manchester Natural History Society — Harrop and his friends — Questions of salary — Literary and Philosophical Society — Limestones in the neigh- bourhood of the town — Dr. Henry's determination- Leigh and Binney's memoir — My memoir on Ardwick beds — Council dispute upon my expenses — Phillips and Fleming — Threatened duel — Museum work among birds — Pseudo naturalists — Tricks upon amateurs — Fossil fishes — Paper for British Association meeting at Liverpool — My private life — Methodist friends — Resig- nation of curatorship — Preparations for lecturing tour — Medical student life in Manchester — Manchester scientific life — Dalton — Dalton and his portraits — Dr. William Henry, Roberts, Sir William Fairbairn, and Eaton Hodgkinson — Whitworth — Blackwall ; James Aspinall Turner ; Binney — Botanical clubs — Buxton — Sir Edward Smith — Mr. John Moore — Leo Grindon — Peter Clare — Dr. Edward Holmes — Social condition of the Literary and Philosophical Society. IF, before my acceptance of the curatorship of the Manchester Museum I had known all I sub- sequently learned, I should certainly have shrunk from taking the step. The museum of the Natural History Society, with which I now became con- 60 REMINISCENCES OF nected, had been in existence many years, under the care of an uneducated |man named Harrop — a man wholly ignorant of every branch of science except taxidermy, and he was probably the most accomplished bird-stuflfer in Europe. Singularly enough, when my father was curator of the Scarborough Museum, its council, knowing that the formation of a collection of British birds would be an important part of his duties, sent him to Manchester to learn the art of bird-stuffing from this very man. Harrop proved an admirable teacher, and I in turn benefited^by learning the same art from his pupil. Harrop naturally resented so young a man being placed over his head in the Society where he had reigned supreme. The greater and unscientific part of the council were in friendly sympathy with their old servant, but a few men of different stamp had recently been placed upon that council. These deter- mined that what was then only a collection of orna- mentally grouped birds should be made into a scientific museum, not only in the bird, but in all other departments. The leader of this reforming party was the Dr. Phillips whose persevering energy had achieved my election to the curatorship. He was supported by Edward Tootal, a leading merchant in Manchester, not a scientific man, but a reformer of shams and abuses in every department of life. Further support .of the same kind was given by Dr. James Bardsley, A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 6i> then undisputed head of the medical profession in the town. Thus, the council was composed of two parties — the one of progress, the other of " laisser faire" One battle had been fought over the letter of invitation sent to me, another on the question of my salary. It was originally proposed that this should be the same as was given to the taxidermist ; but Dr. Bardsley shrewdly saw that my supremacy as curator could not be maintained along with identity of salary. Hence he proposed and carried a notion that mine should be raised to ^"no per annum — £10 in excess of Harrop's — much to the disgust of the friends of the latter on the council. Thus thrown into a Society composed of two hostile camps, and being the elected administrative instrument of only one of them, my position was very uncomfortable. Moreover, my difficulties for some time increased rather than diminished. Almost immediately after my appointment Dr. William Henry, the then distinguished chemist,, proposed to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester that I should be invited to attend its meetings, as if I were a regular member, making at the same time some flattering remarks, very en- couraging to the poor, half-bewildered youth. At that time the geology of the districts immediately around Manchester was very imperfectly understood. A succession of layers of limestone cropped out in the bed of the river Medlock on the north-east side of the town. In the elevated ground overhanging >6z REMINISCENCES OF the north bank of the stream, these limestones had been excavated by means of subterranean workings for a great number of years. Geologically they were known by the name of Ardwick limestones. The -question of the age and geological position of these strata had never been satisfactorily determined, but Dr. William Henry was supposed to have settled the points when he announced that the rock con- tained some seven per cent, of magnesia. This deter- mination, coming from a chemist of high reputation, and who was also the inventor of the then cele- brated preparation of calcined magnesia, was regarded as a proof that the Ardwick limestones were the equivalents of the magnesian limestones of Durham. A short time previously the late Mr. Binney and Mr. John Leigh, subsequently officer of health to the Manchester Corporation, had discovered some thin fossiliferous red shales and limestones in the sides of a drain near the banks of the river Irk, at Colly- hurst. It so happened that their paper announcing this discovery was read at the first meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society that I was able to attend. The two authors were in doubt respect- ing the stratum indicated by these fossils. But I, on examining the specimens on the table with which they illustrated their paper, recognised their identity with some of the most characteristic fossils of the true Durham magnesian limestone. The most important of these fossils was "Aximus obscurus," subse- quently known as " Schizodus obscurus." A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 63 Since both the beds and the fossils which they contained were clearly different from anything seen in the Ardwick limestones, it was obvious that Dr. Henry's suggestions as to the age and geological position of these latter strata were mistaken ones. It soon became evident that the Ardwick limestones belonged to the uppermost portions of the carboni- ferous series. In October 1836, I communicated to Vol. IX. of the third series of the London and Edinburgh Philo- sophical Magazine a memoir on the "Limestones " Found in the Vicinity of Manchester, "giving a full account of their relative positions and of the fossils which they contained, so far as the latter objects were then known to us. Encouraged by the results of the meeting just recorded, Dr. Phillips took another step. He in- formed me that a part of my duty to the Society whose officer I had just become, consisted in working out the general geology of the district, and seeing that I had been correct in my identification of the Collyhurst beds, and having heard that similar beds were exposed in a cutting of the line of the recently constructed Manchester and Liverpool Railway, he sent me off to examine and report upon them. I obeyed his instructions, but when, after my return, he laid before the treasurer my little bill of expenses the storm broke out anew. The then treasurer was Mr. Thomas Fleming, a remarkable but aged man, who had made a large fortune in one of those by- 64 REMINISCENCES OF ways possible only in the midst of a large com- munity. Mr. Fleming was one of the most determined opponents of the reforming party ; hence my bill acted like the traditional red rag to a bull. In the heated discussion which ensued, one of the opposi- tion accused Dr. Phillips of uttering an untruth. At that time one of the members of council was a surgeon of the name of Mann, who had spent the earlier part of his life in the army. The moment the stormy council meeting broke up, Dr. Phillips went direct to Mr. Mann's house, and asked him, as one familiar with the usages of the army, what course he ought to adopt after the public insult he had just received. At that time the duello, though on the wane, had not yet been permanently banished from English society. So Mr. Mann replied that there was but one course open to him. Phillips then asked his friend to be the bearer of a hostile message to the offending individual. An old army man could scarcely decline such a mission, and Mr. Mann at once departed on his errand. It was arranged that Dr. Phillips should await his friend's return at Mr. Mann's own house. The most solemn affairs have occasionally their ludicrous aspects, and such were not wanting here. Looking out of the window of the room in which he was waiting, into Deansgate, Dr. Phillips saw two policemen walking backwards and forwards in front of the house, and at once A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 65 jumped to the conclusion that they were watching him. The idea that Mr. Mann had betrayed him gained strength by the fact, that the messenger was much longer absent than appeared to be necessary. So poor Phillips, who was by nature proud and irascible, gradually worked himself into a white heat of passion, and when Mr. Mann at last returned he was somewhat astonished at the outburst of temper with which he was received. In his excitement Dr. Phillips had forgotten that Mr. Mann's house was next door to the Deansgate Police Station, and allowed the presence of the policemen off duty to distress him. Mr. Mann had failed to deliver the message with which he was charged, because of his inability to find the individual to whom it was ad- dressed ; the challenge reached him, however, ulti- mately through another channel. Before answering his challenge, the recipient pru- dently sought to obtain from a neighbouring|magis- trate permission to fight the duel. This official at once informed him that if the quarrel went one step further, he should instantly arrest both him and his challenger, and so the affair came to an end. This disturbance appears to have cleared the atmosphere, and brought about a better state of things in the council chamber. I worked very hard, and even gained the consent of the council to leave the museum at noon on Saturdays, and to remain away until one o'clock on the succeeding Monday, in order to facilitate my investigations amongst the E 66 REMINISCENCES OF geological phenomena of the district. Men previously hostile now gradually became personal friends, and work progressed smoothly for some time. My first business in each department was to separate the British from the foreign collections. The birds, of which we had for that period a large number, were the objects to which I first turned my attention. They were, when I took charge of the museum, arranged in ornamental groups, without any con- sideration for their scientific relationships. The plan which I adopted with the arboreal birds showed the student at once which belonged to the same genera. The glazed cases in which they were preserved were fitted with artificial branches made of wire and tow and coated with a wash of coloured size. If I had a bird which was a genus in itself, it was supported on a single twig fastened to the woodwork of the case. If, on the other hand, I was dealing with a genus that contained two or more species, a tree was made for them, having as many twigs as there were birds to be placed upon them ; so the boundaries of each genus were seen at a glance. As I have already indicated, there were amongst us two or three men whose science was of the shallowest type, and upon whom the wags of the town sometimes played sad tricks. On one occasion a pseudo-ornithologist was thus "taken in." The humourist, who had extensive gardens around his house, called upon our amateur friend and announced A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 67 that a new bird had been seen in his grounds with a remarkable red neck. The ornithologist at once accepted the invitation to visit his friend's place and see the bird for himself, which he did clearly enough, and immediately called for a gun and shot a poor little robin, which had been accidentally caught in a trap, and had had a bit of red rag stitched round his neck, in order to hoax our ambitious would-be discoverer. On another occasion one of the same fraternity, but who claimed to be an authority on angling, was cheated in a similar way. He was informed that a notable discovery had been made in a neighbouring sheet of fresh water, viz., that salt water herrings had been found in it living, and he was invited to prove the statement for himself. He went, but being very short-sighted, one of the conspirators had no diffi- culty in fastening a fresh herring to his hook, this the angler landed in some excitement. Not content, however, with having hoaxed our piscatorial friend so far, a second fish was landed in like manner. On looking at it a moment, the angler exclaimed, with a twinkling eye, " Nay, not red ones ! " Whilst work at the museum progressed, other labours were not neglected. The recent discoveries at Burdie House, near Edinburgh, chronicled by Dr. Hibbert, had attracted much attention, reveal- ing as they did the existence in the carboniferous rocks of a magnificent group of fossil Sauroid fishes. Soon afterwards the Leeds geologists 68 REMINISCENCES OF enriched their museum with the superb specimen of the Megalicthys Hibbertii, still one of the gems of their collection. Our endeavours to discover similar objects in the coalfields of Lancashire were soon rewarded. In Volume IX. of the Philosophical Magazine of London and Edinburgh, the results of our labours are recorded in my paper already re- ferred to. This paper was followed by an elaborate communication to the British Association at their Liverpool meeting, 1837, on the Coalfields of Western Lancashire, illustrated by a large vertical section of the strata between the uppermost of the Ardwick limestones and the millstone grit. That section is now preserved in the library of the Geological Society of Manchester. Before closing these records of my earlier years in Manchester, if the picture is to be true, a few words must be added of my more private life. My parents had no special religious views, and when I came to Manchester I shared their indifference on these subjects. For some months after my arrival I was fearfully lonely. Coming as I did from a happy and sympathetic home, and flung suddenly into the midst of a vast population, in which I had neither friend nor acquaintance, I yearned for some society, but none offered itself to me. Dr. Phillips, who brought me to the town, had one of those stern natures to whom the emotional and sympathetic sides of boyhood were unknown. Though meeting him almost daily at the museum, it did not appear A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 69 to occur to him that a youth should wish some form of life outside that museum. I was never once invited into his house, and never entered it except when museum matters required me to do so. My lodgings were comfortless, and my evenings solitary and wretched. Whilst suffering this depressing, miserable loneliness, I one day met accidentally in the street a lad of my own age, whom I had known in Scarborough. At that time, a highly respectable and clever family of the name of Beverley were lessees of the theatre of my native town, and were old acquaint- ances. One of the sons of this family was William Beverley, the celebrated artist and scene-painter. My young friend was nephew of William Beverley, and grandson of the lessee. He told me his father had become manager of the Queen's Theatre in Manchester, and my name was at once put upon the " free list." Having been trained at home to enjoy theatrical performances, I revelled in this release from my weary solitude, and spent night after night in the boxes of the Queen's Theatre, with, of course, easy access to the Green Room. The dangers of such a position to a pure but inexperienced lad were inevitable, and must have resulted in wrong, but for help of another and far better kind. One afternoon a merchant of the name of Yates called upon me at the museum, to invite me to accompany him to his house. 1 found that a brother- in-law of this gentleman was visiting Scarborough, and had there heard of my appointment in Man- 70 REMINISCENCES OF Chester ; and, deeming I should probably be devoid of social comforts, he had asked Mr. Yates to look after me. I found my new friend a kind and benevolent member of the Wesleyan Methodist Society, and an earnest reader of scientific books, though not a practical man of science. Mr. Yates1 house became from time to time a veritable haven of rest to me, especially in seasons of temporary in- disposition. In a few weeks Mr. T. R. Williams, the brother-in-law, had returned from Scarborough, and his home in like manner was opened to me. Through these friends I was introduced to a third Wesleyan, Mr. W. H. Johnstone, a partner in the great house of A. and S. Henry & Co., and who also treated me with a kindness never to be forgotten. The benefit which these three families conferred by their unselfish thoughtfulness towards the lonely and almost friendless student taught me a lesson, upon which I have endeavoured to act during my own maturer life, viz., the beneficent influence that a little kind attention to lonesome lads may produce, in thus bringing them under the influences of happy homes. One result of these friendly acts was to familiarise me with Wesleyan circles, and led to my being a member of that religious body for some years. My geology prevented me from ever accepting many of the doctrines propounded from their pulpits, but I can never express too strongly or too kindly the good influence which this union with Methodism A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 71 exercised over me. It shielded me from perils that thickly strewed my path, until I attained to years and a social position, in which I was safe against the temptations that bring so many youths to ruin. I may also mention here that the introduction to these three families led at a later period to one of the most important events of my life. It was at the house of Mr. Johnstone I met with the lady who, in 1842, became my wife, and with whom I lived in happy union for a period of twenty-nine years. In the summer of 1838 the time appeared to me to have arrived for resigning my curatorship and preparing to resume my medical studies. The former I did in June, intending to become student in one of the two competing medical schools of Manchester, when its next session should commence in October. But the important fact stared me in the face, that funds were required for carrying out this plan. I had already provided diagrams and a small collection of fossils, in illustration of a course of six public lectures on geology, and I then made arrangements for their delivery in various towns where I happened to have personal friends. I began my series at Bolton, in Lancashire, and continued it in Wigan, Warrington, Blackburn, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Ripon, Scarborough, and Hull. The work was hard, and its remuneration limited; nevertheless, the money thus earned served to carry me through the winter session, including the pay- ment of medical school fees ; and to supply me with 72 REMINISCENCES OF pocket-money for the subsequent summer. In those days, student life in Manchester schools was some- what Bohemian. Though there were one or two lecturers of the professional calibre of the late Sir James Bardsley and Mr. Jordan, most of them were decidedly men of but ordinary powers; amongst these were several who were not only commonplace teachers but irregular in attendance. The dissecting- room was left entirely in the hands of students, no official superintending teacher having been ap- pointed. A not uncommon occupation of the students was to gather in a semicircle round the fire, and exercise their talent of glee singing ; that is, when they were not actually engaged in more mischievous schemes. The " subjects," by the dissection of which, in those days, medical students acquired their know- ledge of human anatomy, were obtained from the prisons and the workhouses, but people who died in the latter abodes were carefully protected by the Anatomy Act. Any relative or friend could claim a dead person, and prevent him or her from being transmitted to a medical school. Not only so, but a dying inmate of a workhouse could authorise the master of the house thus to protect him. With each " subject " arriving at the school, a coffin was sent to receive " the remains " when they had served their purpose; which remains were for- warded for interment to a particular church, in one of the suburbs of Manchester. On one occasion, a lecturer had acquired a dead donkey, which was A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 73 brought into our dissecting-room to be skeletonised for its owner. When this was accomplished, all other " remains " of the animal were put, by some of the mischief-loving students, into one of the vacant coffins, and the coffin sent as usual to church for interment; the mischievous young monkeys attending in order to witness the clergyman perform the solemn service of burial over his " dear departed brother." Meanwhile, the really earnest workers had, under such unsatisfactory conditions, no alternative but to make the best use they could of their imperfect helps to study. After a weary and very depressing winter the session came to a close, and I left the town for three months' fresh air in my native Scarborough, previous to continuing my medical education in London. Before, however, leaving the Manchester of this period, I should like to give an idea, necessarily a slight one, of the scientific men by whom I was sur- rounded. Of course our most distinguished " man of science" was the then veteran John Dalton. He was rarely absent from his seat in a warm corner of the room during the meetings of the Literary and Philosophical Society. Though a sober-minded Quaker, he was not devoid of some sense of fun ; and there was a tradition amongst us, not only that he had once been a poet, but that, although a bachelor, two manuscript copies were still extant of 74 REMINISCENCES OF his verses on the subject of matrimonial felicity; and it is my belief there was foundation for the tradition. The old man was sensitive on the subject of his age. Dining one day at the hospitable board of Dr. Edward Holmes, he was placed between two ladies, Mrs. William Henry and her sister, Miss Allen, both daughters of Allen, the distinguished mineralogist, of Edinburgh. These ladies resolved to extract from him some admission on the tender point, but in vain. Though never other than courteous, Dalton foiled all their feminine arts and retained his secret. During his last illness, when he had only a house- keeper to take care of him, several of us young men undertook to watch in turn by his bedside through the night. On the last occasion when it was my duty to do this, I noticed he looked very pale and restless. Knowing the end could not be far off, 1 became alarmed, and hastily mixed some hot brandy and water, which he drank quickly. My anxiety was allayed when I heard a fairly audible voice exclaim, "That's good stuff." Dalton's quaint and diminutive figure was a strongly individualised one. Many portraits of him have been published, but in my opinion none are so graphic as one taken by the late Mr. Stephenson,, the well-known engraver, who some years ago sent me a copy of this portrait, along with an account of the circumstances under which it was taken. Mr. Stephenson says : A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 75. " Prior to the meeting of the British Association " in Manchester, it was mooted to me that a good " characteristic portrait of Dalton would be accept- " able ; but Peter Clare said the Doctor would not " sit for a photograph ; so he arranged that I should " attend a meeting of the Philosophical Society on a " certain night. I did so, and he (Peter) strongly " impressed upon me the following words : " ' Thou must not make a sketch, nor be seen " ' doing anything of that kind, on no account what- " ' ever. Thou must be seated where I will direct " ' thee, that thou may be able to look at him.' "At the appointed time 'Peter' took me to an " elevated seat at the extreme corner of the lecture " room, about three or four yards from where the " Doctor sat. A member introduced a small article, " and read a paper, followed by a discussion ; then " the Doctor rose and, taking the instrument, held it " up to examine it. Now, that was the important " moment for me to be impressed with Dalton's " attitude. I assure you it was the most anxious " and trying time in my experience, lest my memory " should fail before I got home. When the meeting " was over, I spoke to no one, saw Peter escort the " Doctor across the street, a dark, dirty, damp night. " I hastened to the Cheetham Hill omnibus and got " home, not allowing a word or object to divert my " mind from what I had seen. After refreshment, I " got out a sheet of Bristol board, and sketched, very " roughly and faintly, with a lead pencil, the head of 76 REMINISCENCES OF " Dalton in the position I saw it My intention, •" when I first made the original sketch, was to bring •tl out a highly-finished engraving .... but P. C. -" bestirred himself, and persuaded the Doctor to sit " for a photograph." After the death of Dalton, we apparently entered upon a scientific interregnum. There were still men who in their youth had done good work, but who were now rapidly passing into the sere and yellow leaf, and their labours were things of the past ; others, whose names we shall meet later, were young and unformed ; and, for the moment, science of the highest order was not so conspicuous in Manchester as it became later — trade and politics chiefly absorbed the intellectual energies of the town. Still we retained, even during this period of com- parative repose, a very distinct social and scientific circle. Among the chemists whom Dalton left, William Henry was certainly the most prominent ; perhaps deservedly so, though he owed his position in the first instance to his father, Thomas Henry. He was, later in life, elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and the subsequent year was awarded the Copley medal. But he became wealthy, and shared the fate so •common to men to whom that happens : social posi- tion and past successes combined to establish a repu- tation ; and, apparently content with this, he made closely, on the whole, to those arrived at by M. Dujardin. At a later period I investigated the shells of other Foraminifera by preparing microscopic sections from them, and in this way I showed that whilst the organisation of the living slimy animal was as low as it well could be, the structure of many of their shells was as complicated as it was beautiful. At a somewhat later date Carpenter carried on a series of investigations, in which he adopted the same methods, and arrived at similar conclusions. The second of the two incidents to which I have referred, though different, led to equally important results. My correspondent, Mr. Reckitt of Boston, had made the discovery, that wells sunk a little deeper than usual reached a wide spread layer of sea sand, showing that at a geologically very recent period the waters of the Wash had flowed much more deeply and broadly inland than had hitherto been known to be the case. Specimens of a deep layer of sand obtained in a similar way demonstrated that the land on that side of the great Norfolk estuary had been under water. Samples of the sand from these two opposite localities furnished me with a rich harvest of beautiful foraminiferous shells, the study of which led to new and not unimportant results. In the latter part of the last century a writer of the name of Walker established a small genus of minute flask-shaped shells, under the name of Lagena. no REMINISCENCES OF On receiving a liberal supply of the Boston shells from Mr. Reckitt, I tried an experiment that proved so successful that I adopted it ever afterwards when separating the more minute Foraminifer shells, from the ooze dredged up from the deeper seas. The material was first thoroughly dried before a fierce fire, and then rapidly stirred up in a broad-mouthed vessel filled with cold water. The result was that the chambered cavities of the Foraminiferous shells, being now full of air, floated to the surface, whilst a gentle stirring with the hand soon sent all the particles of sand and mud to the bottom. The surface residue was now floated off into a shallow dish and allowed to dry. On examining the material thus obtained from the Boston sand, I found that it almost wholly consisted of a mass of beautiful and varied pieces of Foraminiferous shells. I further discovered that the aggregation was especially rich in examples of Walker's genus, Lagena. Walker had already seen and given names to about five of these objects. After a minute study of my specimens I prepared a memoir, in which they were figured and described. But the study of these objects led me to an important conclusion, which I discovered at a later period to be applicable to the entire group of the Foraminifera. I demonstrated that such was their capacity for variation at different ages and from different localities, that long strings of genera and species might be arranged in linear series, rendering it possible that all the A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST in series might be regarded as mere varieties of one species. All these conclusions will be found in my paper in the January number of the Magazine of Natural History for 1848. But another procedure was now suggested. In 1848 Dr. William Carpenter had been investigating the structure of some fossil Nummulites, also Foraminifera from the Tertiary beds of South- Western France, after which he also turned his attention to some of the recent Forami- nifera, and it was recommended that he and I should combine our observations and conjointly produce some elaborate work on the Foraminifera ; the final conclusion arrived at was that I should prepare a monograph on the recent Foraminifera of Great Britain, and that he should produce a volume on the general study of the Foraminifera. This plan was carried out, and my volume was published by the Ray Society in 1857, and Carpenter's was issued by the same society in 1862. Meanwhile various other interesting points were attracting my attention. About this time I sent to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society a short memoir entitled " On the Scaly Vegetable Heads or " Collars from Runswick Bay supposed to belong to "the 'Zamia gigas.1" This memoir was published in the " Proceedings " of the Society, and the subject still in 1 894 continues to excite considerable interest as well as a large amount of dispute as to its nature and affinities. In 1822, Young of Whitby had H2 REMINISCENCES OF published two figures (plate 2, fig. 6) and (plate 3, fig- 7) °f a flowerlike fossil identical with that which I described in my York memoir. Young's figures had attracted no especial attention until 1834, when my father collected further and finer specimens of the same objects. In 1835 I had gone down to Runswick Bay, from which the fossils had been obtained, to see if I could get new examples of these remarkable organisms, which I had succeeded in doing. But as yet no definite conclusion could be arrived at respecting their nature. My friend, the late Mr. James Yates, F.G.S., also obtained a fine series of the same objects, which he ultimately sold to the Geological Museum of the Jardin des Plantes of Paris, where the specimens now are. Shortly after the publication of the above mentioned brief communication by the Yorkshire Society, I wrote a much more detailed and liberally illustrated one for one of the London societies, but which somehow fell into the hands of the celebrated botanist, Robert Brown. This memoir had subsequently an eventful history. Brown was so cautious a man that he left behind him when he died a mass of drawings and memoranda that ought to have been published years previously. In the hands of such a man my memoir had no chance. In it I had figured and described all the specimens within my reach that were calculated to throw light on the morphology and botanical affinities of the objects, the conclusion at which I had permanently arrived being identical with that A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 113 announced in the York memoir, viz., that the objects were part of the fructification of some Cycadean plant. The rocks in which my specimens had been obtained were crowded with the Cycadean fronds of Zamia gigas and I occasionally discovered fragments of Cycadean stems in the same strata ; but all this was much too hypothetical to satisfy the cautious Robert Brown. He did not recommend the publica- tion of the memoir, which was then returned to me. Not satisfied with this, I sent the communication to my friend Edward Forbes, then a rising star in the scientific circles of the metropolis. He wrote to me acknowledging the receipt of my paper, but I heard no more about it for several months. Tired of waiting so long and fruitlessly, I wrote to Forbes, inquiring what he proposed to do with the memoir, when I received from him a most penitent letter. He said again that he had received my packet, and that he had at once put it in some safe place, but that he had never afterwards been able to discover where that place was. Years rolled by before I heard anything more of my MS., but I learnt from others that such was the state of confusion in Forbes' study and library, that the prospect of its recovery was hope- less. I then abandoned the subject and turned my attention to other matters ; but having begun this narrative I may as well jump over a few years to record the ultimate development of the story. Forbes died in 1854. A letter soon afterwards reached me from one of his executors, stating that they had found H ii4 REMINISCENCES OF amongst a mass of other papers some documents that appeared to belong to me, and wishing to know what they must do with them. They were soon sent to me; but, sick and weary of the whole affair, I thrust the packet into a drawer and almost forgot its existence. In the autumn of 1867 I saw a short paragraph in the Athenceum, announcing that Mr. Carruthers of the British Museum was engaged upon the study of the British Fossil Cycadeae, and would be much obliged for the receipt of any infor- mation on the subject that could be supplied to him. Though not knowing Mr. Carruthers personally, I wrote telling him of my unfortunate memoir, and offering to place text and plates at his disposal, to be used in any way that he might think fit. In reply, he informed me that he would shortly be passing through Manchester and would call upon me. He did so, and I gave all my documents unreservedly into his hands. He then informed me that he was on his way to Scarborough and Whitby to study the very objects described and figured on my memoir, and now to his surprise found that I was engaged upon the work that he had contemplated doing. He further informed me that he had obtained a grant from the Linnaean Society in aid of the investigation ; and that if I placed my memoir in his hands he would undertake that it should be published along with his own, without my having any further trouble. All this was done, and amongst other Cycadean genera that Mr. Carruthers was creating, A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 115 he introduced my specimens under the generic name of " Williamsonia." But even yet my un- happy memoir was not beyond the reach of trouble. For economical reasons the officials of the Linnsean Society left out of their plates some of the figures which I had introduced into mine. This change was forgotten when the proofs were corrected, the result being that when I received my copies of the memoir I discovered that the figures and letters of reference on the plates and those in the text were in hopeless disagreement. This was indeed a memoir doomed to disaster. Similar objects to those described in it have since been found in Sweden and India and other parts of the globe, and are now included under the same generic name. Opinions have varied as to the group of plants in which the " Williamsonia " ought to be placed, but at the present time (1894) the pendu- lum, after swinging hither and thither, has returned to my own original idea, that these objects are Cycadean. But whilst the investigations here recorded were in project a purely botanical question was also engaging my attention. One of the most lovely of the forms of aquatic life is the minute, fairy-like sphere known as Volvox globator, familiar to all microscopists. This object had been discovered by Leeuwenhoek so far back as 1699, but for a century and a half little, if any, addition had been made to our knowledge of these elegant organisms, beyond what u6 REMINISCENCES OF was bequeathed to us by its original discoverer. As late as the days of Ehrenberg and even of Professor Rupert Jones (1847) it was ^ill a debated question whether the object was a plant or an animal, both of the above observers having accepted the latter of these conclusions. So far as its appearance was concerned, the little structure was a very thin walled, delicate, trans- parent sphere, to the inner surface of which a large number of minute symmetrically arranged green specks were adherent. A number of tightly drawn threads, delicate as the spiders' web employed by astronomers, extended from each green point to those that immediately surrounded it. Besides these fea- tures, from four to six globes, each larger than the green specks, but varying exceedingly in size and appearance in different specimens, either floated free in the colourless fluid that filled the cavity of the parent object, or adhered to the inner surface of the pellucid wall of the sphere. After weeks of patient observation under the microscope, I one day caught a momentary glimpse of a few symmetrical hexagonal areolae on the inner surface of the pellucid wall. It appeared but for a moment, but during that moment it was sufficiently distinct to convince me that it was part of some structural peculiarity that had hitherto escaped observation. I at once devoted time to the recovery of the vision, but for weeks I laboured in vain. I then tried the experiment of allowing a number of the objects to soak for some A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 117 time in a solution of iodine and glycerine, and in a few of the organisms thus treated I obtained what I was in search of, and which gave me a clue to the structural history of the Volvox. I found that this hexagonal object had originated from one of the numerous minute green points already referred to. It began to enlarge, becoming conspicuous among its smaller neighbours. It next split into two, then into four, until a succession of such binary divisions produced a spherical cluster of green protoplasm enclosed within a delicate trans- parent sphere. At first these subdivided atoms adhered closely one to another ; at length the divi- sions ceased, but the sphere continued to enlarge, became hollow, and eventually the green objects arranged themselves in a single layer surrounding the central cavity, yet adhering to each other by their thin margins. This absolute contact of each proto- plasm with its neighbours became interrupted except at five or six points. As this interrupted continuity increased, each protoplasm ceased to retain its homogeneous condition ; it separated into two ele- ments. The small green mass became suspended in a transparent colourless fluid, the two elements now becoming enclosed within a delicate colourless cell wall. The further enlargement of each of the cells thus produced caused the five or six points of mutual contact to become drawn out into the delicate threads already referred to. The little compound sphere next became detached from the inner surface n8 A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST of the wall of the parent Volvox, to which it had thus far firmly adhered, and floated free in the interior of the older organism, along with four or five others similarly developed. Finally the parent structure broke up, liberating the young forms, each of which then became the parent of a succeeding generation. This series of observations not only demonstrated that Volvox was a plant, but it has since been made the type of a cryptogamic group, now recognised as the Volvocineae. But though I thus succeeded in laying the foundation of a scientific treatment of this lovely object in 1851-52, more had yet to be done before we obtained a fuller knowledge of its remarkable history. Stein and my old friend Professor Cohn, of Breslau, brought to light many important facts connected with its sexuality; yet we are still far from knowing all about it. It is evident that Volvox is subject to some change equivalent to an alternation of generations, apparently dependent upon changes in the seasons, as well as upon other changes in its surroundings. The boundaries of the species are far from deter- mined, notwithstanding what Klein has recently done in that direction. These objects still attract by their fairy-like aspect, and they have now become more interesting because of the remarkable morphological and physiological phenomena which what we know of their life -history has already re- vealed. CHAPTER VII Resumption of cell question — Ossification of cartilage — Professor Schwann and Dr. Schleiden — Dr. Sharpey and bone development — Agassiz' classification of fishes — Geological distribution of four classes — Bearing of Ganoid scales on Owen's " Odontology" — Memoir for Royal Society in 1849 — Second memoir for the Royal Society 1850— Professor Kolliker— Position of oral teeth in relation to skeleton — Oral teeth really dermal structure — Huxley's acceptance of this — Mr. Charles Tomes — Structure of fish bones — Links in scale of organisation missing from living forms but found in fossils — Links in bones of living fishes and placoid saw fish. WHILST these various works were in progress, another interesting subject was occupying my mind. During my medical studies at the London Univer- sity, the Professor of Physiology, Dr. Sharpey, had, as I have already observed, called my attention to some moot questions connected with the structure and development of the bones of the human skeleton. I had never wholly lost sight of this subject, and about the time of which I am now writing I began to give it more serious and systematic attention. But before 120 REMINISCENCES OF saying anything of the results of these investigations, it will be well to give some preliminary explanation, and this explanation is the more desirable since biological science has just undergone a most remarkable development, which has placed most students of life and organisation in a wholly new position. In the very youngest state of all the mammalia, including man, almost every bone is represented by a cartilage, or what is familiarly known as gristle. This cartilage consists of a more or less flexible and structureless substance, in which are lodged numerous clusters of minute hollow spheres, known as cells, and each of these undeveloped bones is invested by a closely adherent thin layer of membrane known, in the earliest stages of growth when the future bone is still cartilaginous, as " perichondrium," but later on, when hard bony matter becomes formed, as " periosteum." The first earthy matter deposited in the bone accumulates in the structureless parts of the cartilage between the clusters of cells. This first process of ossification is soon followed by another, in which the thin membrane referred to as " perichondrium " also becomes hardened by phos- phate of lime being deposited in its substance. This perichondrium is now replaced by a new layer of membrane like its predecessor, but which, having now a layer of true bone beneath it, is designated " periosteum." I have called these two forms of bony matter by names which I shall directly have to A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 121 use. That formed in the cartilage I have called "chon- driform " bone, and that in the more external layers of membrane, " membraniform " bone. In the mam- malia, nearly, but not quite, all the former tissue disappears at a very early age, the growth of the skeleton being effected by the addition and subse- quent ossification of layer after layer of periosteum. Minute cavities, called lacunae, abound in each layer of membraniform bone, in all mammalia and reptiles. The question of the origin of these lacunae brings before us a remarkable epoch in the history of biology, viz., the fourth decade of the present century. Previously to that date the subject of the unity of the organic world was altogether misunder- stood. Thus, prior to the period referred to, it was supposed that the development and growth of animal bodies were brought about by processes wholly different from those which produced the same results in the vegetable world, an error which led to endless vague speculations and baseless guesses. Much was gained when thinkers arrived at the sound conclu- sions of omne vivum ex viva and omne vivum ex ovo. Both these axioms struck at the root of the nonsense prevalent under the name "Spontaneous Generation." But a still greater end was attained when we learnt the signification of the abiding axiom of omne vivum ex celluld. Then it was that we understood for the first time the true seat of life and its uninter- rupted transmission from generation to generation. 122 REMINISCENCES OF In 1839 Professor Schwann, of the University of Louvain, brought out his renowned work, " Micro- " scopical Researches into the Accordance in Struc- " ture and Growth of Animals and Plants." A little previously, Dr. Schleiden, the Professor of Botany in the University of Jena, published a collection of papers, in which the cells and cell development seen in the vegetable world were industriously investi- gated, and, at the same time, Mirbel and others were occupied with similar researches. Thus the extreme importance of the cell in the life-history of plants and animals soon became known and universally recognised. A cell is a minute atom of a semi-fluid substance that may or may not be invested by a " cell wall," which is in the first instance an extremely thin membrane. The contents of the cell are of a com- posite character, and with varying characteristics, though in the young state chiefly composed of what is designated protoplasm. This compound element can, and frequently does, remain for a long time in active vitality, without being invested by a cell wall. The latter is an effect of the vital activity of the protoplasm, not its cause, but in most cases it is the usual effect of that life. We now know that all the tissues alike of the animal and of the plant have been produced by the action of these cells. This truth was only realised by biologists very slowly. Consequently, when Dr. Sharpey first called my attention to the question of A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 123: bone development, he was not prepared to recognise that each of the minute lacunae of bone was the product of a single cell, though there were other microscopists who accepted that explanation. It was this, along with various similar uncertainties, that led me to pursue my own investigations into the development of bones and teeth. I commenced by making microscopic sections of some of the mam- malian quadrupeds, but discovered nothing beyond what had already been done by Dr. Sharpey. I then turned to bones, teeth, and scales of fishes, both recent and fossil, from which I obtained much more valuable and interesting results. I began by pre- paring microscopic sections of a large number of fossil scales, in some of which I found structures of remarkable beauty and interest. M. Agassiz on commencing his celebrated re- searches amongst the fossil fishes of the world found that the existing classifications of living forms were inapplicable to the fossil ones. Hence he pro- ceeded to construct a new one better adapted to his object. He established four groups based upon peculiarities in the structure of their scales. These were the Ganoids, Placoids, Cycloids, and Ctenoids. The Ganoids were the most highly organised of these classes. In them the scales were rhomboidal in form, thick and hard in substance, and, moreover, had their outer surface covered with a layer of bright, shining enamel. Few fishes now living belong to this group, but it is well represented by the huge 124 REMINISCENCES OF Lepidasteus, or bony pike of the Mississippi and other of the larger rivers of America, and by the Polypterus, a smaller type found in the River Nile. But these Ganoid forms are most abundant in a fossil state, more especially in the strata older than the chalk. The second class, or Placoids, are much more widely represented at the present day, and are also comparatively abundant in all the strata from the clay down to the Devonian rocks. This group contains all the tribes of sharks and skates and rays. These are specially characterised by having their skins studded thickly with those enormously sized teeth commonly known as shagreen and used as a covering for cases of compasses and other similar instruments. These fishes have no proper scales beyond these dermal or skin teeth. The Cycloids and Ctenoids comprehend most of the ordinary fishes, with which every one is familiar. The scales of the Cycloids have the upper surface of each scale marked with a series of concentric ridges, which are parallel with the margin of each scale. The Ctenoids have scales of which the anterior part is identical with those of the Cycloids, but at the posterior part each concentric ridge terminates in one or more minute spines pointed backwards. The scales of the Ganoids furnished some remark- able results ; each scale presented three layers, a lower one of bone, usually with magnificent lacunae ; a middle one composed of true tooth structure, and .an upper one of shining enamel. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 125. When Owen, in his " Odontography," published his notions respecting the way in which the dentine or tubulated substance of the human tooth was deve- loped, he described a very elaborate system of soft structures, by means of which this dentine was produced. Identical tissues are produced in the middle layer of these scales by much simpler methods. A layer of thin membrane, which by calcification in the basal part of the scale is con- verted into bone, ascends into a higher portion of that scale, and being calcified, is there converted into tooth substance. Recent observations demonstrate that the dentine of the human tooth is produced in an equally simple way. My discovery of the simple mechanism by which the formation of tooth structures in fishes was produced, now proves to be equally applicable to all teeth. The results of these investigations were laid before the Royal Society in June 1849, an<^ published in Part II. of the " Philosophical Transactions " for that session. The same memoir dealt with the dermal teeth of the shagreen or skins of the sharks and rays, collectively designated by Agassiz the Placoid fishes. I devoted my leisure hours during the remainder of 1849 and the first half of 1850 to a similar study of the Cycloid and Ctenoid fishes, but I also ex- tended my researches into the structure and develop- ment of the bones, as well as of the integumental appendages of these animals. My results were 126 REMINISCENCES OF embodied in a second memoir, read before the Royal Society in 1850 and published in Part II. of the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1851. These two memoirs enunciate several new truths, sufficiently important, indeed, to bring Pro- fessor Kolliker, the distinguished anatomist of Wurtzburg, to Manchester, with the object of studying the specimens from which my new con- clusions were drawn, and with nearly all of which he cordially agreed. In past years there had been much discussion respecting the relationships which the human and other mammalian teeth bore to the skeletons with which they were associated. My investigations among the scales and teeth of fishes led me to the conclusion that these dermal scales and oral teeth were identical, or rather, what are technically called homologous organs ; in other words, that teeth belonged to the skin and not to the skeleton. This novel and unexpected determination was speedily accepted by Huxley. The absolute truth of this determination was afterwards demonstrated by Mr. Charles Tomes, the eminent dental surgeon. That gentleman investi- gated the origin of oral teeth in the dog-fish, a close ally of the shark, and the shagreened skin of which is one mass of minute dermal teeth. He showed that in a very young condition of these fishes a fold of the shagreened skin extended round the lip and entered the mouth; certain of the dermal teeth thus introduced became planted upon the several oral A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 127 bones, where they gradually developed into ordinary oral teeth of that class of fishes. These views, already adopted by Huxley and Kolliker, were alike based upon my discoveries of what took place in fishes' scales, and their recogni- tion as the representation of teeth. Whilst pursuing the above investigation, and especially keeping in view the question of the origin of the lacunae of bone, I made the discovery that a large number of fishes contained no lacunae, though in others they were abundant. The same research also brought prominently to light further facts. I found that in many of the so-called cartilaginous fishes — i.e., sharks and rays — only one kind of bone exists, which is produced by deposit in the inter- cellular spaces of the cartilage, of which all bones primarily consist, and of a phosphate of lime, which gives additional firmness to the skeleton. Bone thus formed I designate chondriform bone. Amongst the ordinary bones of fishes I discovered two forms of bone — an inner one of chondriform type growing inwards, and an outer one deposited in the succes- sively superadded layers of the periosteum, on the membranous layer with which all mammalian bones are invested. Successive layers of this membrane were added to the pre-existing ones so long as the period of the animal's growth continued, the pre- existing ones becoming calcified, and thus adding to the thickness of all of what I designated membrani- form bones. My two terms are practically identical 128 REMINISCENCES OF with the ecderon and enderon suggested by Huxley at a somewhat later period. Mine were based upon the two soft tissues, cartilage, and membrane with which the mineral substance became organically united. Huxley's were based upon the two opposite directions in which the two processes of calcification extended themselves; the first outwardly and the second inwardly, each starting from a line to which our author gave the name of " protomorphic." The most interesting of my discoveries were based upon the various modes in which these two forms of bone growth arranged themselves amongst the different types of fishes. Few educated persons, in these days of Darwinian thought, are ignorant of the fact that, alike in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, life pre- sents a succession of forms from the lowest to the highest types. Not that all the links of these chains are living now. Vast numbers of them existed only during the immeasurable ages of the past, of these we only obtain glimpses here and there, through the labours of the geologist and the palaeontologist. By turning my attention alike to recent and fossil forms of bone, scale, and tooth, I was able to fill in some links of their chain of organisation, which the living forms alone could not have taught. But even amongst the living animals we find a pro- gression not only in entire races, but in indivi- duals ; and in each of these latter we find similar development in the successive stages of life de- pendent upon advance of age. Dealing with the A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 129* development of the skeleton of the vertebrate animals from this point of view, progression mani- fests itself conspicuously. In every case the produc- tion of chondriform bone indicates an earlier state of organisation than membraniform bone does. Sharks and rays, the placoid fishes of Agassiz, have long been known as the cartilaginous fishes; but their skeletons are not, as the name might imply, mere unaltered cartilage; this tissue is converted into chondriform bone. But in one of this tribe — the sawfish — we find the bones of the snout flattened,, immensely elongated, and carrying a row of the huge teeth along each of its margins, to which the animal owes its popular name. This powerful aggressive organ would not be sufficiently rigid for its purpose were it solely composed of chondriform bone. Such bone is present in an inner layer, but a second layer of exostial bone is added externally. This is formed of a soft layer that is somewhat midway between true membrane and cartilage, in which small verti- cally disposed rods of hard tissue are developed and packed tightly together, giving to the snout the rigidity which it requires. Nature thus supplies her own need out of her existing resources, subjecting them only to such modifications as each case demands. Anyhow, we have here a first trace of an introduction of membraniform bone amongst the cartilaginous fishes. We next advance to those fishes in which the skeleton consists of chondriform and true membraniform bone developed side by side. 130 A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST Here the former is not, as in the higher animals, a mere temporary provision, but a permanent struc- ture; and, lastly, we reach the higher mammalia, including man, in which the chondriform bone is abundantly developed in the early stages of life, but where it is a temporary scaffold, to be removed when the permanent membraniform bone is sufficiently strong to bear the weight of the superstructure. Even here, nature does not waste her materials: where two bones rub against each other at a large joint, as at the shoulder, the friction would soon produce mischief, were it not reduced to a minimum. Whilst the cartilage disappears else- where, a layer of it permanently covers the ends of the two bones, which meet, as at the shoulder-joint ; and underlying this cartilage, as Sharpey was the first to notice, we find, permanently, a small amount of chondriform bone. The above two memoirs, the objects of which I have endeavoured to make intelligible, effected my election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, June 1854. CHAPTER VIII Death of Owens— Announcement of will— Proceedings of trustees — Theological question — Professors appointed — First meeting with Dr. Greenwood — Manchester Free Library — My own appointment to Chair of Natural History — Botany — Geology— Opening of college — My early teaching — Progress of college — Evening classes — Decrease in number of students — Condition of boys' education in Manchester — Resignation of Principal Scott — Appointment of Professor Greenwood to Prin- cipalship — Laboratory teaching needed — My Chair too big for good teaching to be possible— Professor Dawkins' appointment— Social life of professors — Difficulties of popularity. ON August i, 1846, the Manchester Guardian made the following obituary announcement : " On the 2Qth " ult., aged 5 5 years, John Owens, Esq. of Nelson " Street." This event proved, little as I was then aware of it, to be one affecting in a most important manner my future life. Glimpses of the possibility that such might be the case dawned upon me a few days later, when a leading article in the same newspaper announced that the deceased gentle- man had left a very large amount* of property to be * "The account was not finally closed until May 1857; 132 REMINISCENCES OF devoted to the establishment of a college in Man- chester, the money " to be applied for the purposes "of affording to youths of the age of fourteen years " and upwards, instruction in the branches of educa- tion taught in the English universities, free from "the religious tests which limit the extension of "university education. The trustees for this pur- " pose include the Mayor, Dean, and Parliamentary " representatives of Manchester, with other gentle- "men of local reputation and influence."* This announcement suggested to my mind the possibility of my becoming associated with the college. The time at which this bequest was made was one unfavourable to the realisation of all kinds of pro- perty ; hence, owing to the various difficulties referred to and encountered by the executors and trustees appointed by the will, a long time elapsed before any observable steps were taken to carry out Owens' intentions. From time to time the local news- papers gave broad hints to the gentlemen in whose hands the estate was, that the outside world expected them to move on a little more vigorously. The first meeting of executors and trustees for educational " and owing to accumulated interest, return of duties, and " profitable investments in stocks, the total sum received " by the trustees amounted to £96,942 is. id. Of this sum " upwards of £2000 was expended on college premises, law " charges, and preliminary expenses." * Thompson's " Owens College, its Foundation and "Growth." A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 133 purposes was not held until June 13, 1848. Some deaths had occurred meanwhile among persons named in the will, and the vacancies thus created had to be filled up. A committee of five of the members of the ruling body was appointed to con- sider the general features which were to characterise the new institution, both as regarded the subjects to be taught and the plans to be adopted, in order that such teaching should be most efficiently done. The gentlemen entrusted with this task considered the question of religious education. Their report was finally agreed upon in 1849, an<^ was issued to the public in March 1850. This soon aroused a com- motion, owing to the decision of the trustees to adopt the views of the committee on the question of religious teaching. They had concluded that no educational movement should be carried on without such religious instruction "as may elevate and " strengthen the moral and religious character of the " students, without encroaching upon the liberty of "conscience, which the testator has so anxiously " sought to protect." In a word, theological lectures should be delivered in the college, attendance on which by the students was to be voluntary. This decision speedily led to active opposition in the town. Both the Guardian and the Examiner and Times attacked it, the latter newspaper especi- ally being most energetic in opposing " the in- " troduction of this theological wedge." On April 8, 1850, a meeting was held to consider whether 134 REMINISCENCES OF the "proposed religious teaching in the Owen's " College be in accordance with the will and inten- " tion of its founder," and it was resolved that a deputation should be sent to the trustees on the subject. This was done on April 18, when strong objections were urged by the deputation to the views entertained by the trustees. On May 18, a counter deputation of Churchmen urged the trustees to adopt the teaching of theology in the college. But the question now assumed a legal aspect ; a " case " was submitted to two legal gentlemen, who decided in favour of the trustees. But the method finally adopted by these gentlemen was a very harmless one ; it was that a class should be established for the study of the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and a similar one for the Greek of the New ; besides which, a course of lectures was to be delivered by the Principal on the " Influence of Religion in Rela- " tion to the Life of the Scholar." The appointment of the various professors now proceeded gradually. Dr. A. J. Scott was elected to the Principalship on October 23, 1850, Mr. Green- wood to the Classical Chair on November 19 of the same year. Contemporaneously with this active college pre- paration Manchester townsmen were busied in dis- cussing the advantages of a Free Library. Being myself a member of this committee, I of course attended its meetings. Whilst sitting at one of them, a refined, delicate-looking young man entered the A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 135 room and took his place at the council table exactly opposite to where I was sitting. A friend whispered in my ear that the young stranger was Mr. Green- wood, the newly elected Professor of Classics. I was candidate for the Chair of Natural History, but had not received my appointment, neither was I in any degree sure of obtaining the coveted chair. I need scarcely add I regarded my vis-a-vis with con- siderable interest, not unmixed with envy of his success. I was personally introduced to the young man at the close of our meeting, which introduc- tion proved to be the commencement of a friendship of the closest type ; a friendship that has lasted until a month ago, when my beloved colleague and Principal passed from here into eternity. I little anticipated so important a result when I first saw him enter that council room. At the opening meeting of the said Free Library, which, however, did not take place until September 1852, eighteen months after the opening of the college, Sir James Stephen, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, said: "At Cambridge, as " everywhere else, where educated men are brought " together, Manchester is a name of deep and even of 1 1 awful significance ; for here is the metropolis of " that Titanic industry, on the continued success of " which England has deliberately pledged her station " and her authority among the nations of the "world." My own appointment to the Professorship of 136 REMINISCENCES OF Natural History, which included Zoology, Botany, and Geology, was in January of 1851. The college was opened March 12, 1851, by an address from Professor Greenwood on the languages and literature of Greece and Rome. Illness deferred the Principal's address until a later date. My own was delivered a few days after Mr. Greenwood's. The contemplation of the work that lay before me, that of teaching three subjects rolled into one, almost appalled me. But the first session closed before the end of its third month, being merely a pro- visional one, to enable the college to commence operations without further delay. Hence my brief course of lectures was confined to a hasty review of the animal kingdom. During the summer months I had time to deliberate on my plans. I decided to divide my course into two parts, dealing with the animal kingdom one year, and with botanical and geological subjects a second year. The botanical portion of my work was that for which I was the least prepared. At that time the great schools for teaching chemistry and advanced botany were mainly to be found in Germany, and of the German language I was utterly ignorant ; hence I was at a .great disadvantage in endeavouring to work up the subject. Still the difficulty was overcome by deter- mination and work. Reverting to the progress of the college, some circumstances of importance demand notice. During the first complete session, 1851-2, sixty-two students A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 137 were scattered through the several classes. The number of regular day students rose in the sessions 1852-3 and 1853-4 to seventy-one. So early as the year 1854, Professor Copley Christie and I applied for permission to open classes for the teaching of our respective subjects to work- ing men in the evening. The trustees sanctioned our application, and the result of this first experi- ment of the utility of such teaching is shown by the fact, that our precedent has been followed ever since. In my natural history class, the number of evening students rose in 1855 to eighteen, and in 1860 to forty-one. The session 1854-5 showed a small decrease in the number of day students. This decline con- tinued until 1856-7, when they sank to thirty- three — little more than half the number with which we started in 1851-2. There was evidently something seriously wrong. One fact was un- questionable, school education in Manchester was at that time at a very low ebb ; of course the schoolmaster of the day ridiculed this explanation ; but it was a fact. The students were not prepared for those higher standards of education which a collegiate institution demanded, and below which its professors could not descend. The teachers of the schools retorted by declaring that we could not know anything about their teaching, because they were not such fools as to send their upper students to us. Ere long the truth of our assertions 138 REMINISCENCES OF was plainly demonstrated. At that time, the local university examinations were becoming popular, and were being held in a number of the larger centres of population. At length one such was held in Manchester, and when the usual annual report of these examinations was published, Man- chester stood at the bottom of the entire list. But whilst our complaints respecting the low stan- dard of Manchester educationists were thus justified, other influences equally unfavourable were at work. At that time an opinion prevailed widely amongst the merchants of the town, that if lads were to do any good, either to their masters or to themselves, they must enter the warehouses very early in life, t.e.t by the time they were fourteen ; and, having done so, they must undertake the most menial of the operations which were demanded by the business men of the day. That this conviction was then very widely spread, even among the most intelligent portion of the mercantile community, I know from my own personal association with many such. But while influences so unfavourable to the progress of the college undoubtedly affected our position, there remained other causes within the college itself not calculated to promote our success. The trustees requested the professors to assist them with their views as to the causes of the threatened failure. Professor Frankland, who held the Chair of Chemistry, spoke out very freely, and said he thought the training was too exclusively A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 139 classical, fitted only for those students who sought B.A. or M.A. degree. To this, and other reasons of weight, he added two suggestions of distinct signi- ficance. One was that scientific teaching should be put in a more prominent position than it then occupied, and further, that there should be periodical meetings of the teaching staff to discuss the internal management of the college.* The most influential of the original trustees were undoubtedly men who attached more value to classical than to scientific training, as the stipends respectively awarded to the two classes of professors sufficiently indicated. The Principal, Dr. Scott, was a man of the highest intellectual culture, but there was then small appreciation of, and no demand for, this kind of culture among the hard-headed and eminently practical men of Lancashire. Whilst they honoured the intellectual strength of the Principal, his was not the line in which they wished their sons to be trained; hence he failed to gain their entire confidence. The concluding defect reported by Professor Frankland was one severely felt by the science professors ; it was that they found much difficulty in obtaining access to the Principal. The con- viction that some change in the relations of Prin- cipal and Professor was necessary, led to a meet- ing of the latter body at the house of Professor Frankland, where a resolution was adopted and * Thompson, p. 157. 140 REMINISCENCES OF forwarded to the trustees, asking them to appoint a Deputy Principal, who should be required to be at the college through certain hours of the day, where he could be easily reached by such of the professors as required to consult with him. The meaning of this procedure on the part of the staff was doubtless understood by the Principal, who on May 28, 1857, resigned his office. Dr. Scott's resignation robbed Manchester of a man of rare culture, and his death a few months later is said to have taken from the world more Dantesque learning than was left behind. On July 24 of the same year, Professor Green- wood was appointed in his place. During the first year of the new Principal's control, the decline in the number of ordinary students was arrested ; and in the three succeeding years they rose respectively to forty, fifty-seven, and sixty-nine. But many other additions were needful before the college attained to its ultimate career of real success. Great educational changes were meanwhile taking place outside Owens College. On the Continent the oral teaching of science in lecture rooms was gradually becoming supplemented by the practical training only attain- able in the laboratory. Liebig had long previously employed such a method of teaching chemistry at Giessen, and had attracted students from many distant localities. Bunsen followed this example at Heidelberg, and with similar results. When Dr. Frankland was appointed to the Chemical Chair at Owens, he was provided with a laboratory, but a A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 141 long time elapsed before any other department of the college was similarly favoured, yet natural philosophy, engineering, and natural history in all its departments required similar provision. Mean- while the Manchester community began to discover the advantages of a higher intellectual and scientific training as preparation for even a commercial and manufacturing life ; hence the authorities said an extension of their teaching machinery was inevit- able. I was one of the first of the teaching staft to be affected by these changes. At the out- set I had to teach comparative anatomy, botany, geology, and palaeontology. I saw that to make the anatomy of lower animals intelligible, a know- ledge of at least the broader features of human anatomy was desirable ; that when, for instancer I showed my students a few microscopic threads given off from the intestine of an insect, and told them that these were early representatives of the kidney in higher animals, they should know what this most highly developed organ was like. Still,, although my need for a laboratory was so great, there was no possibility of its being satisfied until the college removed from its first home in Quay Street to its present handsome buildings in Oxford Road. This removal did not take place until 1872. I soon found that to include this increased work in a session of little more than eight months was almost impossible, so I spread my complete course over two- I42 REMINISCENCES OF sessions ; but at length even this system had to be abandoned. The number of our students who sought the degrees of the London University steadily increased, and it became indispensable that my full course should be included in one session. Adequate teaching of so wide a range of subjects in so limited a period was an impossibility. Such a demand was too absurd to be credited, yet I was informed by the authorities that it must be done. The amount of my time required by the college was thus doubled, and the requisite leisure could only be obtained by abandoning some portion of my work elsewhere, and so I resigned my office of Surgeon to the Manchester Ear Institute. But the inevitable inadequacy of such hurried teaching compelled the council to obtain for me efficient relief, and in 1872 Mr. Boyd Dawkins was appointed lecturer in and subsequently Professor of Geology. This step, whilst on one hand it afforded the much needed relief, introduced me to a pleasant and lasting friendship. Social life among the professors was very different in these earlier days of the college from anything possible now. As I have already stated, shortly after the college began its work we found the need of periodic meetings of its small staff. We arranged to hold them at our several houses in turn, on each fourth Saturday evening of the month. The early part of the meeting was devoted to business, the later hours to supper and sociality. This method of A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 143 combining work with pleasure was continued by us for many years, indeed until the removal to the new buildings, when successive additions to the staff and consequent increase of time required for the business of the college, compelled us to abandon the home meetings and transfer them to the college buildings. In the early years, when the staff consisted of only five or six professors, we were frequently invited in a body to the hospitable tables of the wealthy Manchester merchants. This social element in our life of hard work was extremely pleasant, and I believe that for many years the free intercourse between townsmen and staff succeeded in keeping down the town and gown feeling, so much to be deplored in University centres. That by this time our teaching was become popular may be judged from one of the difficulties of our Principal, Dr. Greenwood. A merchant came into the Principal's room accompanied by his son. After explaining that he wanted the boy to be admitted as student, the Principal inquired which classes he would like his son to attend. The good merchant, jingling gold in his trousers' pockets with a proud consciousness he could afford it, replied, " Oh ! I reckon he may tak' 'em all." CHAPTER IX M. Meniere and Paris — Establishment of Ear Institute — Fresh water animalculae— Memoir in the Journal of Microscopical Science — Birth and death of our first child — Birth of other daughters and of a son — Contributions to the London Quarterly — Journeys to Switzerland with Mr. John Fernley — Removal to Fallowfield— Construction of garden— Family excursion through Switzerland — Illness and death of my wife. LEAVING now the college and its progress for awhile, I should like to glance at one or two incidents which were of importance to me. During the early college days I suffered from an attack of abscesses of the glands of one of my ears. This was a branch of surgery on which I had never received any instruction; and on consulting some of the leading surgeons of the town I discovered they knew no more of the matter than I did. I resolved to take some steps by which I could become better acquainted with aural diseases. One of the most eminent of European aural surgeons of those days was Mons. Meniere of Paris, surgeon to the cele- brated Deaf and Dumb Hospital in the Rue de St. Jaques. Being acquainted with Mons. Adolphe A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 145, Brongniart, the distinguished botanist and palaeo- botanist, I wrote to ask him for an introduction to the eminent aurist. The result was that I received an extremely kind letter from M. Meniere, inviting me to Paris, and offering to give me all the assist- ance in his power. I at once availed myself of his kindness, and spent day after day in his consulting- room. I there studied his cases and became familiar with his instruments and the method of their em- ployment. After this training I returned to London, where I received some further assistance and instruction from Mr. Toynbee and Mr. Harvey, then the two aurists of London, and I finally re- turned to Manchester to try how best to prac- tise all I had learnt. I gathered together at my house a few influential friends to consult on the subject, and a resolution was adopted that we must establish an institution in Manchester for the treat- ment of aural diseases. My old friend, William Romaine Callender, afterwards one of the members for Manchester, suggested that he and I should together canvas the leading merchants of the district for subscriptions wherewith to support such an institution. We did so, and not wholly unsuccess- fully. The Institution was established, and Sir James Bardsley, the leading local physician, accepted the office of president, and for long afterwards took the greatest interest in our scheme. A committee was formed. My brother-in-law, Mr. Bateson Wood, X i46 REMINISCENCES OF undertook the office of secretary, and thus far our ship was launched. Of course it was my intention to be the medical officer of the new concern, but I had ascertained that there was a young medical man in the town who had paid some attention to aural ailments. He was an entire stranger to me ; but I called upon him, introduced myself, explained our scheme and the extent of our arrangements, and invited him to co-operate with me as one of the surgeons to the Institute. This offer was accepted by him; he joined our committee, and we next proceeded to search for a local habitation. We found at the lower end of Oxford Street, near St. Peter's Square, a house that would serve our purpose. A day was fixed for commencing practical operations. When that day arrived I went to the Institute, wondering whether or not a single patient would make his or her appearance, and my heart rather sank when I found none. I sat down, how- ever, to contemplate the situation, and shortly one man appeared. Whilst I was investigating his case and putting into practice my newly acquired knowledge, several other patients found their way into the waiting-room. After attending to all these, I returned home in elated spirits, fully assured our experiment was not going to end in failure. I continued to occupy the position of surgeon, along with my coadjutor Mr. McKeand, until, as I have previously stated, the college required all the time I could spare from private practice, and then I was A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 147 compelled reluctantly to resign all connection with the Institution, though for many years I received aural patients at my own consulting-room. Meanwhile, though professionally so fully occupied, natural science still interested me. A supply of the exquisite little fresh water animalculse, the Melicerta ringens, made its appearance in a tank in which I was growing Vallisneria spiralis. This circumstance gave me the opportunity of submitting the animal to a careful study, which brought to light a number of points that had escaped the attention of previous observers. My resultant memoir was published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. The ovary of the animal was sufficiently distinct, and I was able to watch the entire development of the ovum. When this became matured I desired to discover where and how it made its escape into the surrounding fluid, between which and it a considerable distance seemed to intervene. My first attempt to do so ended in a failure; after watching with my eye at the micro- scope a couple of hours, a professional summons called me away. My second attempt, though very wearisome, was successful. My eye never left the microscope through a long succession of hours. At length I saw the body of the transparent creature violently contorted, the egg passed through a very short oviduct into a long cloaca, by the complete eversion of which organ the ovum was set free. But my labours were not yet ended, though the 148 REMINISCENCES OF painful retention of my eye at the microscope was not required to be so incessant. I succeeded in watching the successive changes which the yolk underwent during its conversion into an embryo, which latter moved freely for some time within its shell, but through which it ultimately broke and escaped into the surrounding water. Further changes were undergone by the creature before it attained the mature form ; each of these was carefully observed and recorded, and at length I had the enjoyment of seeing my young nursling reach the full development of the parent form. After the publication of my memoir in January 1856, 1 received a communication from Mr. Pritchard, the well-known microscopist, and author of a copious volume on the Infusoria. He informed me that he was about to publish a new edition of this work, and was anxious to obtain my assistance. I eventually undertook to superintend the section which dealt with the sys- tematic history of the Rotatoria and Rotiferae. The new volume made its appearance in 1861. Before, however, dwelling further upon these scientific observations, I will glance at a few domestic incidents of my comparatively unchequered life. In 1845 our first child was born, but before she was four years old she was taken from us by whoop- ing-cough. Within three months of her death, however, our desolate home was brightened by the birth of a second daughter, and then followed two other daughters, and, lastly, a son was given us. A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 149 After completing his education, he was articled to my brother-in-law, Mr. Bateson Wood, and has now become the head of the firm Wood & Williamson. I may say of him, and of myself, that from his birth until now he has given me no anxiety beyond what any little failure of health has caused, and some of the keenest pleasures possible to the heart of a father. In 1854 my Wesleyan friends resolved to publish a quarterly journal of a higher literary and scientific character than any that had been previously at- tempted by them. They solicited my co-operation, which I promised to give, and wrote an article for their first number on " The Lower Forms of Vege- " table Life," the first of a long series which con- tinued until 1869, when the pressure of other work compelled me to retire from their staff. The maga- zine was called the London Quarterly. During this period I made two excursions with my friend, Mr. John Fernley, up the Rhine, and through Switzerland to the Italian Lakes. These visits familiarised me with Alpine flora, which I had previously known only from illustrated books ; whilst they also gave me opportunities of indulging what had long been a favourite amusement — viz., land- scape sketching in water colours. Whilst events just recorded were passing, I was suddenly prostrated by illness. Operating upon a case of fistula, the point of my knife had slightly grazed the skin of my finger, and mortific matter 150 REMINISCENCES OF had penetrated. Inflamed absorbents were followed by epilepsy, and my medical friends insisted upon my retiring from private practice for fifteen months, and abandoning my town residence for a more suburban one. Purchasing some land in the village of Fallowfield, a little more than three miles south of the Manchester Exchange, I had a house built and a large garden constructed. After returning to practice, I began to build hothouses, and gradually supplied myself with a number sufficient to cultivate all such plants as were required for my botanical classes. As time went on, garden and glass- houses gave me everything a professor of botany could need. Most of the rarer cryptogams, salvinias, marsileas, lycopodiaceous plants of almost every type grew most abundantly ; orchids, saracenias, and four or five of the finest type of drosera flourished in profusion, and I reared dionaeas from my own seed ; thus ample provision was made for the supply of every want when the extension of botanical teaching, and especially the creation of the laboratory department, increased my requirements in the shape of specimens for dissection and micro- scopic study. In the early summer of 1870, I took my family into Switzerland. In Paris I had several palaeo- botanical discussions with Professor Brongniart. From Paris we went to Strasburg, where I had arranged to spend some hours with Dr. Schimper. We then reached the Oberland by way of Schaff- A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 15! hausen and Zurich. At the latter place I should have met Prof. Heer, and only failed to do so through the blundering of a waiter at our hotel. We then went through the Oberland and over the Gemmi Pass to reach the Rhone, then crossed the Tete-Noir to Chamounix Valley, and returned home by way of Paris. Soon after our return, we celebrated the marriage of my eldest daughter. During the early months of 1871 my dear wife suffered a martyrdom from some internal mischief. Towards midsummer the painful symptoms disap- peared, only to return in still more serious form at the beginning of the following year. Within a limited number of days the inevitable blow fell upon our happy home circle. Then came a long and dreary time of depression and sadness. CHAPTER X Removal of college to Oxford Road— Increase of laboratory work — Appointment of Professor Marshall — Professor Marshall Ward, F.R.S.— Establishment of " University" —New medical schools — New biological laboratories —Curious medical cases — Coal investigation OUR college quarters in Quay Street had long been too small for our needs, and, indeed, were so over- crowded as to be more than inconvenient. Arrange- ments for erecting new buildings in Oxford Road were pushed, and the foundation-stone was laid by the late Duke of Devonshire on September 23, 1870. This building was opened for regular work on 'October 7, 1873, and proved to be an enormous relief by affording space for doing our work, but it was still far from giving us all we wanted. I had one room in which I was able to store my •collection of objects used for the illustration of my lectures, which room I also utilised for a poor .mockery of a laboratory. Very shortly the amalgamation of the Royal School On Heterangium tiliseoides and Kaloxylon Hookeri. Proceedings Royal Society. 1886. Note on Lepidodendron Harcourtii and Lepidodendron Fuliginosum. Proceedings Royal Society. 1886. On the Morphology of Pinites Oblongus. Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. 1886. On the True Fructification of Carboniferous Calamites. Proceedings Royal Society. 1887. On the Relation of Calamodendron to Calamites. Man- chester Literary and Philosophical Society. 1887. BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 Preliminary Report of the Committee, consisting of W. C. Williamson and Mr. Wm. Cash, F.G.S., on the Flora of the Halifax Hard Bed. British Association. 1886. Report of the above Committee. 1887. Monograph on the Morphology and Histology of Stigmaria Ficoides. Palceontographical Society. 1887. On Goethe as Botanist and Osteologist. Publications of the English Goethe Society. 1887. On the Fossil Trees of the Coal Measures. Manchester Geological Society. 1888. On some Anomalous Cells developed within the Interior of the Vascular and Cellular Tissues of the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures. Annals of Botany. 1888. General Morphological and Histological Index to the Author's Collective Memoirs on the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures. Introduction, 1890. Part I., 1891. Part II., 1893. Part III., 1894. Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society's Proceedings. On our Present Knowledge of the Vegetation of the Carboniferous Age and the Further Advancement of the Study of the Subject. Manchester Geological Society. 1891. Earlier Palseontographical Work. Manchester Geological Society. 1892. Is Stigmaria a Root or a Rhizome? Natural Science. Macmillan & Co. 1892. Sigillaria and Stigmaria. By Sir William Dawson and W. C. Williamson. Natural Science. Macmillan & Co. 1892. The Genus Sphenophyllum. Nature. 1892. 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY Address on the Mineralisation of Minute Tissues of Animals and Plants. Journal of the Quekett Micro- scopic Club. 1893. Corrections of an Error in Part XIX. of the Author's Memoirs on the Organisation of the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures. Proceedings Royal Society. 1894. On Light thrown upon the Question of the Growth and Development of the Carboniferous Arborescent Lepi- dodendra, by a Study of the Details of their Organ- isation. Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. 1894. Obituary Notice of Le Marquis Gaston de Saporta. Man- chester Literary and Philosophical Society. 1896. Further Observations on the Organisation of the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures. [In collaboration with Dr. D. H. Scott.] Part I. Calamites, Calamostachys and Sphenophyllum. 1893. Philosophical Transactions. 1895. Part II. The Roots of Calamites. 1894. Philosophical Transactions. 1895. Part III. Lyginodendron and Heterangium. 1895. Philosophical Transactions. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &* Co. London and Edinburgh RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SEWTQNILL APR 0 3 2000 U. C. BERKELEY 12,000(11/95) YCI 15208