Linnean Society of New South Wales. The Macleay Memorial Volume

Author:

Joseph James Fletcher (1850?-1926)

Fletcher was a biologist and editor, probably born at Auckland, New Zealand.

He arrived in Australia with his parents in 1861 and was educated at Ipswich Grammar School, Queensland, Newington College, Sydney, where his father was president, and the University of Sydney (B.A., 1870; M.A., 1876). He taught briefly at Wesley College, Melbourne, where he developed an interest in natural science. As no science degree was offered in Australia, from 1876 he studied at the Royal School of Mines and University College, University of London (B.Sc., 1879).

Specialising in biology, he studied for a time at Cambridge and in 1881 published his first paper. From his return to Australia that year Fletcher taught at Newington until 1885; he introduced an elementary course of anatomy and physiology and was acting headmaster. He was one of the first to investigate closely the embryology of marsupialia; carrying out field work around Bathurst he published three papers in 1881-83 on the genito-urinary organs of the kangaroo, and in 1884 a paper in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, ‘Catalogue of papers and works relating to the mammalian orders, marsupialia and monotremata’.

He had joined the society in 1881, its council in 1883 and in January 1886, at the invitation of the society’s founder (Sir) William Macleay, became librarian, as Macleay’s executor he was later involved in the legal and financial difficulties arising from his will. He was director of the society from 1893, for thirty-three years, guided its affairs and meticulously edited its Proceedings from Elizabeth Bay House.