24 THE JOUllKAL pv liOTAXr 



and generous as he was, however, he could feel and resent a sUght 

 or an injury. Even in what might be supposed the thornless path of 

 bryolog_y, offences ivill come, and one does occasionally in treading 

 that path come across what oiir American allies expressively term a 

 " snag." But in our thirty-five years of correspondence and intei'course 

 we never had an ill word, though we have not always agreed on points 

 of br3^ological doctrine. These I think did not greatl}^ interest him ; 

 on all such matters he swore by S. 0. Lindberg. I do not know how 

 far he had come into personal contact with Lindberg, but that acute 

 bryc legist was to him ' guide, philosopher and friend' — his word was 

 almost an ipse dixit, and it required very strong grounds indeed to 

 induce him to depart by a step from Lindberg's system. 



An artistic alfection for the mosses themselves was I believe the 

 real cord that bound him so closely to bryology. He loved the 

 mosses as the Conqueror loved his deer, and he formed his herbarium 

 no less carefully than William made his New Forest, and much less 

 destructively. His indefatigable and painstaking method is evidenced 

 by a work which he gave me some years back, viz. an interleaved copy 

 of Schimper's folio Versuch einer JSntwickelungs-Gcschiclife cler 

 Torf moose, the whole of it — -some one hundred pages — translated by 

 Braithwaite and written out in a beautiful, almost copper-plate hand. 

 His artistic sense is shown throughout his work ; in the Sphag- 

 nacecB of Eii,rope and JVorth America, and still more in his ojnis 

 magnum, the British Moss Flora. This elaborate work, a true work 

 of art, the first part of which a]>peared in 1880, and the last in 1905, 

 bears all the marks of the amateur in the original and highest sense 

 of thi^ word ; its elaborateness and liigh finish indeed in some measure 

 defeated its own purpose, for his intense desire to make it artistically 

 perfect, the high finish of the illustrations, the elaboration of the 

 sj^nonymy, brouglit the work to such a size and cost, while at the 

 same time extending the period of its publication over so many years 

 as to prejudice very greatly its sale, and Dr. Braithwaite was a loser 

 by several hundred pounds through its publication. 



His herbarium, now in the Department of Botany at the British 

 Museimi,- bears additional testimony, if it were needed, to his pains- 

 taking care, and the delicacy of manipulation revealed in his micro- 

 scopic work and draughtsmanship. He was more concerned to shoAv a 

 good, presentable, t3'^pical " specimen " of a species than to follow it in 

 its varieties and forms. Varieties I think, in fact, interested him little, 

 perhaps rather repelled him. Many of us can sympathize with this 

 feeling, and could do very well without them, were it not unfor- 

 tunately that it happens to be the system on which Nature works. 



Apart from his two principal works he published little ; which is 

 scarcely to be wondered at, since the British Moss Flora was in itself 

 a life work. He had, however, numerous correspondents, many of 

 them beginners wanting their specimens named. Everyone who has 

 given himself to the study of a group will know — and the less 

 popidar the group the better he will know it, — how much demand on 

 one's time this form of hack-work, albeit very helpful and useful 

 hack-work, may make. Yet I never knew him to grumble at it, and 

 it must liave occu^^ied a great deal of his time, till in his later years 



