The press cutting records the death of William Ferguson at the age of 67, who for more than a generation has been the referee on botanical questions and many other branches of natural science. He was interred in the General Cemetery. Ferguson aided successive Directors of the Ceylon [Sri Lanka] Botanic Gardens in identifying, cataloguing and describing the flora of the island. He assisted the late Dr Thwaites in the preparation of his ENUMERATIO and Dr Trimen deeply laments Ferguson's loss. Ferguson was also a special authority on the reptiles of the island and knew a great deal about the animals and birds of the country. He originally trained as a surveyor, later becoming a practical botanist. He wrote a great deal but had more the faculty of constantly collecting materials than rendering them available for publication. Ferguson has left a mass of notes behind including descriptions and illustrations for a monograph on the luminous beetles known as fireflies and glow-worms, which he had long contemplated. Only a few days before his death he was supplied with copies of a pamphlet he had compiled embodying a lithograph of a 'bazaar drug' he had identified, and correspondence with the late Sir Walter Elliot, Dr Cleghorn and other scientists. His mind was 'wonderfully clear' until the last. Ferguson died on the third anniversary of the death of his wife and one day before he would have been entitled to draw a deferred pension from his time as a surveyor. He first arrived in Ceylon in Dec 1839. A list of works by Ferguson from the list of 'Ceylon writers and writers on Ceylon' prepared for FERGUSON'S HANDBOOK 1885 – 1886 is given in conclusion. Page 1 of 2.