Sir William Wright Smith, the eminent botanist, who was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1944 to 1949, died on 15 December 1956, in his eighty-second year. For thirty-four years he held the dual appointment of Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh and Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; he was also Queen’s Botanist in Scotland. Born at Parkend near Lochmaben on 2 February 1875, the son of a Dumfries-shire farmer, he early acquired the interest in living things and a love for the country, which (though he was to spend the greater part of his life in Edinburgh) remained predominantly with him all his days. His school was the Dumfries Academy where he went till the age of sixteen, when he left for Edinburgh as first University Bursar. Every day he had to travel to school by train, yet he found time to explore his native countryside, and his regard for natural history was by no means confined to plants. For example, he enjoyed watching birds and fishing, or, with one or two companions, guddling for trout or, again, in a leisure hour lying on some sunny bank by a convenient rabbit warren with book and gun. Though not robust he played conventional games, and he was fond of cycling, sometimes covering long distances, once at least more than a hundred miles in one day.