FALCONER, liven (1808-65). A Scottish botanist and paleontologist, born at Forres (El ginshire). Ile graduated at the University at Aberdeen in 1826, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1826-29, was ap pointed assistant surgeon in the service of the East India Company in 1829, and in 1832 became superintendent of the botanic garden at Saharan pur (Northwestern Provinces), India. His in vestigations led to the discovery in the Sly!Mk hills of large numbers of important vertebrate fossils. For his work in connection with these remains he obtained the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of London in 1837. It was on his recommendation, in a report to the Gov ernment of Bengal, that the culture of the tea plant was introduced into India. Ile also discov ered the asafetida plant. and was the first to give a description of it. During his residence in England on sick leave in 1843-47 lie prepared the India fossils of the British Museum for exhibi tion. In 1847 he received appointment as super
intendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, and professor of botany in the medical college there. Ile was elected foreign secretary of the Geological Society, and a vice-president of the Royal So ciety. He edited a large incomplete work en titled Fauna Antigua Sivalensis (1846-49; nine parts with illustrations of 1123 specimens, and one volume of text), and published a Descriptive Catalogue of the Fossil Remains front the Remitlik Hills (1859). Considerable unpublished material was edited by C. Murchison as Pal ron tological Memoirs and :Votes of the Late Hugh Falconer (London, 1868). Consult the biograph ical notice in the first volume of that work, and the Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers, vol. ii. (London, 1868).