410 Linncean Society. 



imbibed from his father. The small town in which he lived fur- 

 nished no persons of congenial pursuits with whom he could asso- 

 ciate, but this circumstance, though it limited his progress, did not 

 damp his ardour. He became the manager of a bank at Welch Pool, 

 and with an income extremely limited, was not only enabled to 

 give a liberal education to his rising family, but, by the help of such 

 books and instruments as he could purchase, to extend his studies 

 to many branches of natural science with great zeal and success. In 

 1824 he became a partner in a banking establishment in Wrexham, 

 from which he retired in 1830, and never entered into business again; 

 for being in possession of a moderate competence, he willingly relin- 

 quished together the profits and the cares of active life, in exchange 

 for the tranquil happiness he hoped to enjoy from the undivided pur- 

 suit of those sciences of which he had ever been passionately fond. 

 Hitherto he had been able to follow them only as a recreation, having 

 never allowed their cultivation to encroach on the time set apart for 

 business ; yet he had already, from the ample stores around him, ac- 

 quired extensive collections in the departments of botany and geology, 

 which were his favourite studies. 



In 1837 he transferred his residence to Manchester, where he in- 

 tended to pass the remainder of his life. During his short abode in 

 that great emporium of manufactures and commerce he endeavoured 

 by all the means in his power to advance and diffuse a love for sci- 

 ence, and especially for natural history ; and by his associates in the 

 different societies of that place his memory will be warmly cherished. 

 He had looked forward with much interest to the approaching meet- 

 ing of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 

 that town, but this hope was not realized. He died after a sudden 

 illness on the 4th December last. 



Mr. Bowman became a Fellow of this Society in 1828. He has 

 contributed two papers to the sixteenth volume of its ' Transactions' : 

 viz. " An Account of a new Plant of the Gastromycous order of 

 Fungi," which is well described and figured under the name of Ener- 

 thema elegans ; and a memoir " On the parasitical connexion of 

 Lathrtea Squamaria, and the peculiar structure of its subterranean 

 leaves." The last-named paper is a valuable contribution to our 

 knowledge of a very obscure branch of vegetable physiology, the 

 connection, namely, of Root-Parasites with the plants on which they 

 grow, and is beautifully illustrated by two plates of details, from Mr. 

 Bowman's own pencil. His other natural- history publications are, 

 with one exception, geological. They consist of, 1. a memoir •• On 

 the Longevity of the Yew, as ascertained from actual sections of its 

 trunk, and on the origin of its frequent occurrence in Churchyards," 

 in Loudon's 'Magazine of Natural History for 1836'; 2. "Notes on a 

 small patch of Silurian Rocks to the W. of Abergele, on the north- 

 ern coast of Denbighshire," communicated by Mr. Murchison to the 

 Geological Society in 1838; 3. "On a white fossil Powder found 

 under Peat-Bog in Lincolnshire, composed of the siliceous fragments 

 of microscopic parasitical Conferva;" 4. "On the origin of Coal, and 

 the geological conditions under which it was produced;" 5. "Ob- 



