316 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
allowed in a very friendly spirit by the landlord or the tenant of the 
several properties, were latterly welcomed by the same individuals, and 
his person and pursuits became familiar to the residents in all parts of 
the island. It has been our privilege to see him going out at early 
morn and returning at dewy eve, laden with his collections, which 
were, for more convenient examination, transferred from the ordinary 
vascula in which they were packed in the field, to another, so large, that 
we should hardly be credited if we gave its exact dimensions, but 
which he used to call his “ witness-box.” Nothing was left undone 
which could tend to the completing and the perfecting of his “ Flora.” 
In 1842 he made an autumnal tour, of some weeks, in Ireland, visit- 
ing Killarney, Limerick, Cork, &c. 
But we should render little justice to Dr. Bromfield’s varied know- 
ledge, if we were to speak of him only as a British, or even as an 
European botanist or naturalist and traveller. In January 1844 he em- 
barked for a six months’ tour in the West India Islands, visiting several 
of them, and spending his chief time in Trinidad and Jamaica. At 
the former island he received much attention from the botanist Lock- 
hart, one of the few survivors of the Congo expedition under Captain 
Tuckey, the Curator of the Botanic Garden there, and in the latter 
(Jamaica) from Dr. M‘Fadyen, a physician of great practice, and 
author of the * Flora of Jamaica, —both since dead. In the same 
island, too, he joined Mr. Purdie, then collecting for the Royal Gardens . 
of Kew, and they made several excursions together, in one of which our 
friend was bitten by a “ black snake,” which he had incautiously seized 
by the middle. The creature held to the back of Dr. Bromfield’s hand 
by its fangs for nearly a minute, and could only be removed by a negro 
forcing the end of a stick into its mouth. Happily the species was not 
à poisonous one : a swelling of the hand, with slight pain, only ensued. 
In the summer of 1846 he resolved to visit North America, and 
_ there to make a very extensive and, to his inquiring mind, profitable 
tour, embarking in July of that year, and not returning till the autumn 
-of the following. How advantageously his time was spent on this 
occasion may to some extent be seen in the ‘ London Journal of Botany,’ 
where, at the request of the Editor, he was with difficulty * induced to 
et > Dr. siarum was not anxious to appear in print at an early period. His first 
n = ira we know, is his valuable ten de: Cu 
d gd alterniflora, Lois., in 1836, in the ‘ 
| disec cr gag Spartina alterniflor : 
‘Botanical M agazine, vol. ii. p. 254. 
