LINNEAN SOCIETT OF LONDON. xU 



of a highly cultivated mind, and all of which he followed with 

 much enthusiasm and success. His early residence in the country, 

 and in a district abounding with wild plants, and the fact of his 

 tutor's partiality to botany (as testified by Sir James Smith, when 

 dedicating a new species of Willow {Salix Forhyana) to him), 

 gave him a taste for Natural History in general, and especially 

 for collecting and investigating the vegetable productions of the 

 neighbourhood. This branch he studied with great ardour ; and, 

 nothing deterred by the difficulty of the subject, after attaining a 

 competent knowledge of British Phsenogamous plants, he devoted 

 his attention to the Cryptogamia. Perhaps in consequence of his 

 residence upon the sea-coast, Mr. Turner was chiefly attracted by 

 the Algcd ; and there cannot be a doubt that his ' Synopsis of the 

 British Euci,' published in 1802, contributed largely to encourage 

 the study of the sea-weeds of our own islands, by the accuracy of 

 its descriptions, and, being written in a popular form, by the 

 elegance of the composition. 



The ' Synopsis of British Euci ' was quickly followed, in 1804, 

 and after a tour in Ireland which afforded a rich harvest of 

 Mosses, by his ' Muscologise Hibernicse Spicilegium,' with 16 

 coloured plates of new species, the descriptions and preface 

 written entirely in Latin. 



Mr. Turner's third botanical work was prepared in conjunction 

 with his late intimate friend, Lewis Weston Dillwyn, Esq., of 

 Swansea, and was entitled " The Botanist's Gruide through England 

 and Wales," in 2 vols. 8vo: it was the result of many botanical 

 tours in various counties, and of communications of notes and 

 specimens from numerous correspondents. His object was now to 

 undertake a general history of sea-weeds, foreign as well as 

 British, with coloured figures of all the species, and full descrip- 

 tions in Latin and English, entitled " Euci, sive Plantarum Euco- 

 rum Generi a Botanicis ascriptarum Icones, Descriptiones et His- 

 toria." It was undoubtedly the most distinguished and laboured 

 of all his publications — commenced in 1808 and concluded in 

 1819, in four volumes, large quarto and folio, with 258 plates, 

 many, and those the best of them, from the pencil of his accom- 

 plished lady, Mrs. Turner. This valuable and highly meritorious 

 work, unfortunately for botany, and unfortunately for Mr. Turner's 

 rising fame in that direction, was the la«t he ever published on a 

 science he fondly loved and continued to love and to talk of with 

 more pleasure than on any other subject, so long as his declining 

 faculties permitted liim. He apologizes, in the closing page of 



