Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/687

 support by writing and lecturing of Emile Zola's plea in behalf of Captain Dreyfus, a French officer, who had been wrongfully condemned for espionage.

Meanwhile Murray used his literary power to best effect in fiction. In 1879 he contributed his first novel, 'A Life's Atonement,' periodically to 'Chambers's Journal.' From that date until his death scarcely a year passed without the publication of one and at times two novels. Between 1887 and 1907 he occasionally collaborated with [q. v. Suppl. I] or Mr. Alfred Egmont Hake. Murray's novels 'Joseph's Coat' (1881) and 'Val Strange' (1882) achieved a notable success. 'By the Gate of the Sea' (1883) and 'Rainbow Gold' (1885), which first appeared in serial form in the 'Cornhill Magazine' under the editorship of [q. v. Suppl. I], fully maintained Murray's repute. 'Aunt Rachel' (1886) was equally attractive. Murray's fiction abounded in vigour. His plots are loosely constructed and he drew his incidents freely from his journalistic experiences. His style shows the hand of the journalist, but he is effective in describing the neighbourhood and inhabitants of Cannock Chase.

Murray died on 1 Aug. 1907 in London after a long illness, during which he endured much privation. He was buried at Hampstead. A memorial tablet in copper with pewter medallion was unveiled at West Bromwich public library in December 1908. He was twice married. By his first wife, Sophie Harris of Rowley Regis, whom he married in 1871, he had a daughter, who died young; by his second wife, Alice, whom he married about 1879, he had one son, Archibald. Two sons and two daughters were born out of wedlock.

Besides his novels, Murray was author of several rambling volumes of autobiography. Such were: 'A Novelist's Notebook' (1887); 'The Making of a Novelist, an Experiment in Autobiography' (1894); and 'Recollections' (1908).



MURRAY, GEORGE ROBERT MILNE (1858–1911), botanist, younger brother of [q. v. Suppl. II], was born at Arbroath, Forfarshire, on 11 Nov. 1858. He was educated at Arbroath High School, and in 1876 studied under Anton de Bary at Strasburg. In 1876 he became an assistant in the botanical department of the British Museum, having charge of the cryrptogamic collections, and in 1895, on the retirement of Dr. William Carruthers, he became keeper of the department, a post which he was compelled by ill-health to resign in 1905. He was lecturer on botany at St. George's Hospital medical school from 1882 to 1886, and to the Royal Veterinary College from 1880 to 1895. In 1886 Murray acted as naturalist to the solar eclipse expedition to the West Indies; and again visited the same area on a dredging expedition in 1897; in 1898 he chartered a tug for a dredging expedition in the Atlantic, 300 miles west of Ireland, on which he was accompanied by a party of naturalists; and in 1901 he became director of the civilian scientific staff of the national Antarctic expedition in H.M.S. Discovery, under Captain R. F. Scott. He was, however, only able to accompany the expedition as far as Cape Town. For some years he devoted much of his vacation to the collection of diatoms and algae in the Scottish lochs from the fishery board's yacht Garland. Murray was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1878, apparently in contravention of the bye-laws, as he was then under age. He became a vice-president in 1800, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1897. He died at Stonehaven on 16 Dec 1911.

He married in 1884 Helen, daughter of William Welsh of Walker's Barns and Boggieshallow, Brechin, and left one son and one daughter. His wife died in 100l. Murray's contributions to botany refer mainly to marine algæ, but he wrote the section on fungi in Henfrey's 'Elementary Course of Botany' (3rd edit 1878); he contributed the articles on Fungi and Vegetable Parasitism to the ninth edition of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (1870 and 1885); and between 188S and 1865 be published three reports upon his investigations of the salmon disease, undertaken at the instance of Professor Huxley. In 1880 he published a 'Handbook of Cryptogamic Botany,' together with [q. v. Suppl. II]; from 1892 to 1895 he edited 'Physiological Memoirs, being Researches made in the Botanical Department of the British Museum,' of which three parts appeared, each papers by him; and in 1885 he