DARWIN MEDAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 266, 9 November 1928, Page 7

DARWIN MEDAL.

Royal Society Award To Dr.

Cockayne.

SERVICES IN RESEARCH. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, November 8. The Royal Society awarded the Darwin Medal to Dr. Leonard Cockayne, of the Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand, for research into ecological botany.

A RARE HONOUR. j ONLY TWENTY CONFERRED. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Darwin Medal, which is accompanied by a grant of £100, is given biennially in reward of work.of acknowledged distinction, especially in biology, the field in which Charles Darwin himself laboured. The award may be made either to a British subject or a foreigner, and without distinction of sex.

The Darwin Medal has been awarded to, among others, Alfred Russell Wallace (1890), Sir J. D. Hooker (1892), T. H. Huxley (1894), Ernest Haeckel (1900), Francis Galton (1902), William Bateson (1904), August Weismann (1908), Francis Darwin (1912), Yves Delage (1916), Thos. H. Morgan (1924} and Duckinfield Henry Scott (1926).

Dr. Cockayne's is the twentieth medal awarded.

Leonard Cockayne was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1855, and after a private education he migrated to Australia, where he was engaged in teaching. In 1881 he arrived in New Zealand and started an experimental station, . introducing thousands of orchard trees, shrubs and herbs. Since 1888 he has devoted all his time to the study of the flora and vegetation of New Zealand. In 1920 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Cawthron Institute. He was engaged in 1918 by the Department of Agriculture to carry out researches with a view to improving tussock lands, and to carry out experiments in regrassing in Central Otago. He has been the recipient of many medals for his research work, and has done much in New Zealand for the cultivation of grasses.