42 



ESSEX WORTHIES. 

 II.— EZEKIEL GEORGE VARENNE, OF KELVEDON. 



Hy PROF. G. S. HOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S. 

 {Kedd, December y:>ih, i8go.] 



"DOTANY in England owes more perhaps of its many-sided pro- 

 gress to the unostentatious labours of those enthusiastic students 

 of Nature who have appeared but little in print than to its most volu- 

 minous expositors. Among such enthusiasts Essex has benefited by 

 the work of Samuel Dale, Edward Forster, William Williamson New- 

 bould and Ezekiel George Varenne. Mr. Varenne was of Huguenot 

 descent, and his father being resident medical officer of Marylebone 

 Infirmary it happened to be in that building that the future botanist 

 was born, May 6th, 1811. He received his medical training at 

 Westminster Hospital and at his father's Infirmary and became in 

 1832 a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries and in the following 

 year a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1832 he was 

 appointed surgeon to the Nottingham Cholera Board of Health and 

 he seems to have settled in practice at Kelvedon about 1847. Here 

 he passed the remainder of his life, retiring from practice some time 

 before his death, which was preceded by an illness of two years' 

 duration. He died April 22nd, 1887, aged seventy-five years, and 

 was buried in the churchyard of the parish. He was a scholar and a 

 linguist as well as a naturalist, widely read and most careful in 

 observation. In botany he may well have received part of his 

 training, if not his first stimulus, from William Frederick Goodger, 

 resident apothecary to the Marylebone Infirmary from 181 1 to 1832, 

 and Richard Rozea, a surgeon practising in the same parish about 

 the same time. The herbarium formed by these two gentlemen in 

 the London district between 1815 and 1823 was presented to Mr. 

 Varenne about 1862.' Though in this his favourite recreation he 

 worked largely at the Cryptogamia, especially mosses and lichens, 

 he also did good service among flowering plants. He seems to have 

 taken that special interest in " critical " species that marks the 

 thorough botanist. He collected Ritdi,- Carices, Fo/a/nogefons, and 

 species oi Jiosa, Chenopoduiin and Chara ; whilst his pai)ers, mainly 



1 'rrimeii and Dyer, "Flora of . Middlesex. ' p. 398. 



2 (Jibson, " Flora ofEsse.v," p. 98. 



