Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/99

 THE LATE LOKD DE TABLEY. 79 fig to be invented. But science is great, and advances in the most unexpected directions. And yet the Ficus suggests painful memories. My dear friend, it is a sad subject, but there was once in the British flora a liumex Warrenii. How pathetic is that " once." ! My infant was found — not precisely in the bulrushes, but near them, duly christened by Trimen, and registered in the Journal of Botany* All went well for a time; but one of those infernal German professors, who know everything and several matters besides, wrote that he had found the child in Silesia, or God knows where, and had already christened it Rumex Knafd, after some detestable Knaf ! and so it had to be, and you may read in Hooker's Student's Flora, last edition, under Rumex viaritimus, the sad history how Rumex Warrenii is now Knajii. Ah, those Germans ! they will quietly come and annex the lot of us some day.'" The mention of this Rumex recalls the other critical genus for which Warren showed a marked preference, as is indicated by his having a bramble and a dock — Rumex maximus, Schreb., which he practically added to the British floral — engraved on his book- plate.]: He collected numerous Rubi for the Botanical Exchange Club, to the Reports of which he contributed valuable notes ; and presented many to the British Museum Herbarium, to which he was at that time a frequent visitor. Among other critical genera to which he paid considerable attention may be mentioned Bromus, Triticum (Agropyrum), and Callitriche ; of the last of these he described a new species, C. Lachii § (now referred as a variety to C. obtusangula), which finds no place in Mr. Jackson's Index, but is published in the Eeport of the Botanical Exchange Club for 1876, p. 17 (1876). His Flora of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, printed in this Journal for 1871, is a remarkable contribution to local botany. The scope of his work, however, will best be gathered from the list of papers which is appended to this notice : it is hardly too much to say that there is no one of them which is not instructive and suggestive. Warren's principal fellow-workers were Dr. Trimen, Mr. J. Gr. Baker, Mr. F. M. Webb (whom he engaged for a time to help in the Cheshire Flora), and Mr. R. A. Pryor ; Mr. Newbould was at once his mentor and his admirer, || and he was on terms of intimacy with Mr. H. C. Watson : from which it will be seen that he was associated with the best critical English botanists of his period. During the later years of his life he kept up an acquaintance with Mr. Baker, but his retiring disposition and his waning interest in botany separated him from such of his former associates as had not been removed by distance or death. '' The most recluse of men," 161, t. 146. t See Journ. Bot. 1874,'34. I Warren published, in 1880, ' A Guide to the Study of Book-plates ' ; his own book-plate was designed and presented to him by Mr. W. Bell Scott, who was also a collector of these triries. § The name refers to the Lach Eye meadows, near Chester, where Warren found the plant. II Warren makes this characteristic reference to Newbould: " Borrer is known best at second-hand. In this respect he resembles Socrates, and an acute botanist of the present day who has inherited the reticence of his master," Journ. Bot. 1877, 193.
 * Rumex maritimus forma (hybrida ?) Warrenii, Trimen in Journ. Bot. 1874,