THE FAMILIES, (;EXERA AND SPECIES OF 

 PTERIDOPHYTA OF THE TRANSVAAL PROVINCE. 



With Axxotated List of Species. 



By Joseph Burtt-D.\v\\ F.L.S.. and Vicary Gibbs 

 Crawley, B.A. 



Introductory Note by Joseph Burtt-Davy. 



The following" paper was prepared duriny,' many pleasant 

 evenings of the past year; evenings that will live in memory as 

 among the most delightful spent on such work, a memory to 

 be cherished because it can never be repeated, for Mr. Crawley 

 has since passed away. It is my sad duty to place on record, 

 for the benefit of South African Botanists, and in justice to his 

 memory, a note of the work he has done. 



I knew scarcely anything of Mr. Crawley's past, save that 

 ,he was the son of a Northamptonshire Rector, and was an 

 }( )xford graduate. He held a post in the Audit and Exchequer 

 iDepartment. and was sent to South Africa about the year 1907 

 to audit Army accounts, being stationed at Pretoria. His 

 term of service abroad expired last year, and he left Pretoria 

 on Saturday, August J 1st, 1909, in order to obtain a day's 

 botanizing on Table Mountain before sailing on the " Kenil- 

 worth Castle " on the 25th. On September J4th, on my return 

 from the country, I found awaiting" me a cheerful letter from 

 him, posted at Madeira; that same morning he died in England 

 while in the brightness and vigour of young manhood, and only 

 about two weeks before the date set for his wedding. 



In the few months during which we worked together at in- 

 tervals, I grew to know him intimately, and my only regret was 

 that he had been two years in the Transvaal without my having 

 known him or having" been al)le to secure his assistance for 

 the advancement of Botanical Science. 



I was constantly surprised by his knowledge of morphology 

 and botanical terminology, for his intense modesty and shyness 

 ])revented his friends realising that he knew so much of the 

 subject. 



Mr. Crawley rode much, or took long walks, with his friend 

 Colonel Abdy. and had the true collector's instinct for finding 

 the haunts of rare plants; on these occasions he added many 

 rarities to the comparatively large list of species found in the 

 vicinity of Pretoria. He collected also near Barberton and 

 Xylstroom, and his last collecting" trip in the Transvaal was 

 made to Wolhuter Kop, in an endeavour to find some of the 

 rarer plants recorded by Zeyher and Burke, but never since re- 

 collected. Unfortunately, through an accident, the collecting" 

 press I was sending with him failed to reach him, but he suc- 

 ceeded in bringing back specimens of the rare Olcandra nerii- 

 fonnis. Hooker, only once before collected in the Transvaal 

 (by Zeyher and Burke), though apparently common in Natal. 



He also found, climbed and measured a specimen of Cyathca^ ^...„^^ 



D re get, twenty-one feet in height, probal)ly the tallest ^9^W^0A/'^ 

 men of this species on record. /e^^ _— — v 



L 1 2 R A R 



