Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/98

 78 THE LATE LOJiD DE TABLEY. method of work. But long before this he had been investigating the flora of his native county. In the first paper mentioned he speaks of " trying some years ago to make a list of Cheshire plants,"'"'' and of having "left brambles to the last"; and Mr. Watson, in the * Compendium ' of the 'Cybele,' mentions a " care- fully drawn up MS. Flora of Cheshire, lent to me by Mr. Warren in 1867 " : this, unfortunately, was never published, although a list of queries connected with it was issued in 1873, with an inti- mation that the Flora was likely to appear shortly. He helped considerably in the preparation of the Flora of Middlesex (published in 1869), Mr. Newbould being frequently his companion in collecting. After 1877, although his general interest in British plants con- tinued, it had ceased to be absorbing, and he published nothing. In 1864 he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society, but withdrew after a few years. Of his enthusiasm for botany during the period indicated, Sir M. E. Grant Duff gives an amusing instance. I remember, too, how, when standing for Mid Chesliire in the Liberal interest in 1868, he combined his canvassing with plant collecting. Mr. Robert Holland, with whom I was staying at that time, was one of his electioneering agents, and the two found at least as much common ground in botany as in politics, in which, to say the truth, Holland took but little interest. Sir Grant Duff says : — " The same remarkable powers of observation which enabled him to become a good Greek numismatist, made him one of the most accurate of amateur English botanists. I use the word he worked for a very considerable time ; but I am quite aware that his attainments in his favourite science were such that I might, with the approval of many, have claimed for him a higher place. He never ceased to jest about the want of appreciation with which his botanical studies were looked upon by most of those with whom he came in contact. He used to relate, for example, with great glee, that, while he was compiling the Flora of his county, he one day observed that he had just time, after coming off duty with his yeomanry, to find a particular plant of which he was in search. Fully accoutred as he was, he hailed a street-carriage, jumped into it, and told the driver to go to a point in the immediate environs of Chester. Arrived at the spot indicated, he got out, searched along a ditch, found his plant, and directed the man to return. He did so ; but, stopping in front of a large building, turned to his fare, and said, ♦ That, sir, is the asylum.' The soul of kindness, he never laughed at any one save himself ; but that he did very frequently. I take the following from a letter written to me, just before I left Madras : — " ' I have opened the slip containing Ficus Trimeni with awe and reverence. I did not actually go down on my knees, as Linnseus did on seeing the furze in full bloom, but I had some difficulty in preserving that upright position which is the privilege and distinctive mark of the primates. I did not expect a new many years, of every species found within a mile radius of my dwelHng-place." Journ. Bot, 1871, 228.
 * amateur,' because he never published the Flora of Cheshire, at which
 * •' During a former residence in Cheshire, I made a careful list, through