86 JOHN BLAND WOOD, M.D. 



Botany,' by explaining all recorded instances of structure which 

 did not fit in well with that system. He was also engaged in 

 studying the effects of various new (or proposed) vegetable thera- 

 peutic agents ; and be was interested greatly in the possibility of 

 checking infection, even in towns, by police regulations for the 

 isolation of patients. His amiability of character and intense 

 scientific entbusiasm universally commanded sympathy. Mr. 

 Clarke died very suddenly, of apoplexy, at Hampstead, February 

 4th, 1890. 



JOHN BLAND WOOD, M.D. 



Dr. John Bland Wood died at his residence at Withington , near 

 Manchester, on February 11th. He was born Dec. 3rd, 1813, at 

 or near Pontefract, wbere he received his early education. He 

 subsequently entered the medical profession and studied at Dublin, 

 Edinburgh, and London, as well as in Germany. At Brougbton, 

 not then so closely joined to Manchester, he took up his residence 

 and soon established an extensive practice, being elected a Fellow 

 of the Koyal College of Surgeons in 1859. His health beginning 

 to fail, about 1875 he gradually withdrew from practice, and about 

 two years ago removed to Withington. 



By his death the botanical world loses one of its oldest 

 members, whose name will be less familiar to the present genera- 

 tion than it was to botanists of two or three decades ago, but 

 which still holds a place amongst many who have made British 

 plants, and more particularly British mosses, their study. It will 

 always be to Brougbton that the recollections of bis old friends will 

 turn as the spot made familiar by his vigorous personality, and there 

 yet remain some in whose minds will never be effaced during life the 

 remembrance of jovial meetings that have there taken place around 

 the hospitable board, at which he so genially and energetically 

 presided ; the merry expeditions that have there been planned ; 

 the long debates over critical and disputed species, carried on far 

 into the night under the soothing influence of a cloud of grey 

 smoke. Very few botanists have been as careful as he was over 

 the drying and preparation of their specimens, and especially his 

 collections of Grasses, Carices, &c, made during the "forties" and 

 " fifties " were surpassingly thorough and complete. Dr. Wood 

 employed Bichard Buxton to collect for him, and paid the ex- 

 pense of his journeys into North Wales and elsewhere : he is 

 referred to, though his name is not mentioned, in Buxton's 

 * Botanical Guide ' (p. x), as " a gentleman who had just begun to 

 study botany," in 1839. In later years it was to the Mosses that 

 he devoted himself with his usual superabundant energy, and he 

 carried on an active correspondence with Wilson, now preserved in 

 the Botanical Department, British Museum, and also with Schimper, 

 Moore, Marratt, and many other collectors ; the youngest if they 

 showed promise being always welcome to his advice and assistance, 

 and sure of a series of emphatic lectures on all points of detail. 



