Abstract
DR. J. C. WILLIS, the well-known botanist, celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday on February 20. When Dr. Willis was appointed director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, in 1896, he not only developed the gardens to a high state of efficiency but he also began a very fruitful study of the flora of the island, coining for the first time in contact with a most interesting tropical flora. He began with the investigation of the Podostemaceæ, a group of highly modified type of flowering plants which grow on the waterworn rocks of rapidly flowing tropical streams in various parts of the world. When at Cambridge as personal assistant to Sir Francis Darwin, he had accepted with enthusiasm Darwin's doctrine of natural selection, but faced with the fact of numerous species of the same family living under practically similar conditions of life he began to question the Darwinian theory of evolution. Thus the views which he has put forward in his later stimulating books had their origin in his intensive study of the Podostemaceæ.
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Dr. J. C. Willis, F.R.S. Nature 151, 247 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151247a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151247a0