193 



ETHEL SAREL GEPP 

 (1864-1922). 



Ethel Sarel Barton (afterwards Gepp) was born at Hampton 

 Court Green, Surrey, on Aug. 21, 1864. About 1872 the family 

 moved to Tieehurst, Sussex, where she sjjent a happy childhood ; for 

 some time she w^ent to the same school as her brothcj s, and later was 

 educated at home — she always attributed her broader outlook to the 

 absence of the narrowing intluencu of a girls' school. In 1883 the 

 home was broken up by the death of her mother ; her father went to 

 India, and Ethel went to Leipzig, where she remained for about a 

 year and a half studying music, especially the violin, on which in- 

 strument her keen appreciation of music would doubtless have enabled 

 her to become an accomplished performer. But an attack of " writers' 

 cramp," brought on by malnutrition and overwork, compelled her to 

 abandon her studies and to part with her violin ; she. however, con- 

 tinued her piano instruction, and in later years when her health allowel, 

 rendered effectively works of the classical composers. Modern music 

 did not appeal to her. 



After her return to England, Ethel went, in 1886, to stay with 

 an aunt at Eastbourne. Here she acquired a love of Botany from 

 the Ilev. H. G. Jameson, who had established a class for young 

 people whom he interested chiefly in Mosses, in the study of which 

 he was and is a proficient. He furnished his pupils with lithographed 

 keys to the British Mosses ; these were subsequently printed in this 

 Journal for 1891 and later incorporated in a volume published in 

 1893. 



After returning to London she lived in Kensington, and in 

 April, 1889, came to the Natural History Museum with a view to 

 working in the Department of Botany, of which the late Dr. Car- 

 ruthers was then Keeper; and George Murray, then in chaig-e of 

 the Crytogamic Herbarium, advised her to take up Marine Algiie. 

 She attended Dr. Scott's classes at the Koyal College of Science — 

 George Brebner, Prof. Thomas Johnson, and Miss Lorrain Smith 

 were among her fellow-students ; she worked daily at the Museum, 

 and subsequently became practicall}^ though unofhciallj^ a member of 

 the working staff, her knowledge being always at the disposal of 

 students or correspondents. Among the latter ma}^ be named J. G. 

 Agardh, F. Schmitz of Greifswald, and Edouard Bornet ; among her 

 personal friends and acquaintances were included many of the leading 

 botanists, especially those interested in Alga^. 



Her first published paper was that on the galls of liliodymenia 

 'palmata^ printed in this Journal for March, 1891 ; she had previously 

 collaborated with Murray (to whose Fhycological Memoirs she con- 

 tributed), in a paper on Chantransia read before the Linnean Society 

 in 1890, but not published in the Society's Journal until May, 1891. 

 From that time until the breakdown of her health in 1911 she was a 

 frequent contributor to these pages ; among her papers may be men- 

 tioned those on Cape Algae in 1893 and 1896, biographical notices of 

 Journal of Botany. — Vol. 60. [July, 1922.] o 



