6 The Presidential Address.
In 1845 Mr. Gibson married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel
Tuke, Esq., of York, and sister to the well-known physician.
In 1847 he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society; but,
after the publication of his Flora and the death of his father,
other duties took him away from active scientific work. He
nevertheless evinced to the last his deep sympathy with the
multiform progress of knowledge. He was a skilful photo-
grapher, and took great interest in the progress of electric
lighting; and among his many services to his native town
was the promotion of the branch railway from Audley End.
His father having, in 1830, discovered a number of human ske-
letons in his garden, Mr. Gibson in 1876 commenced a series
of excavations which have resulted in the discovery of about
150 skeletons with ornaments belonging mainly to the 9th or
10th century, underlaid by a prehistoric village of pit-
dwellings, with bones of Bed Deer, Bos primigenius, and
other early mammals, and implements of bronze and iron.
These most important discoveries will be described in an
interesting paper by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith, illustrated, at Mr.
Gibson's expense, by twelve valuable plates, in the forth-
coming part of the 'Transactions of the Essex Archaeological
Society.'2 Besides a good herbarium, including that of
Lightfoot, he possessed an admirable collection of fossil
shells from the Crag.
He became a member of this Club on May 28th, 1881. He
was present at the York Meeting of the British Association,
and among the last works of his life was the re-arrangement
of the Saffron Walden Museum, mainly founded by his uncle,
Jabez Gibson, about 1834. This work was begun in 1880,
before which time the state of the collections was almost
indescribable ; and it has been carried out most completely
at great expense, many valuable series of specimens having
been presented by Mr. Gibson, or, like the series of antiques
from Cyprus, procured through his instrumentality. He had
hoped to have received this Club at Walden on the occasion
of the re-opening of this Museum.
In 1877 and 1878 he held the office of Mayor of Walden,
2 [Since published, Trans. Essex Arch. Soc, vol. ii. (n.s.), p. 311.—Ed.]