LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 45 



tions are given only of the new species, which are very nume- 

 rous, and these in Latiu ; for other plants references are made 

 to various books, thus presuming an access to a good library. 

 Dr. Thwaites never regarded it. as other than a " prodromus " or 

 forerunner of a full descriptive and illustrated work ; but the 

 latter could o£ course never be undertaken unless large help 

 from Government were forthcoming. 



The publication of this book secured its author's reputation as 

 a systematic botanist ; and acknowledgments of this were received 

 from several quarters. In Grermauy the Imperial Leopoldo- 

 Caroliniau Academy granted the honorary degree of Ph.D. to the 

 author ; and a far more gratifying and substantial honour was his 

 election into the Eoyal Society. The customary compliment of 

 dedicating a genus to a naturalist of repute had, as already 

 noticed, been long before bestowed upon Dr. Thwaites ; but the 

 obscure little alga Thioaltesia was supplemented in 1867 by the 

 foundation by Dr. J. D. Hooker of Kendriclda, this name being 

 given to one of our most beautiful Ceylon flowering plants, of 

 the order Melastoinacece, and which had been referred in the 

 ' Enumeratio ' to the purely Malayan genus Pachycentria. A 

 very poor figure has since been published by Beddome of this 

 splendid epiphytic climber, which he found to grow also in the 

 Anamallay hills. 



It had always been Dr. Thwaites's intention to publish a 

 further part of the ' Enumeratio ; ' but this he never accom- 

 plished. Indeed, after this time he devoted himself almost 

 entirely to the cryptogams, returning thus to his first love. He 

 worked out and arranged all the Mosses, Fungi, and Lichens, 

 making them up into numbered sets in the same manner as the 

 flowering plants. Dr. Thwaites did not, however, himself publish 

 the result of so much labour, but submitted his collectijons, draw- 

 ings, and notes to specialists at home. The new mosses were 

 brought out by Mitten in 1S72, the corticolous Lichens by Rev. 

 AV. A. Leighton in 1870, and the Fungi by Eev. M. J. Berkeley 

 and Mr. Broome in 1870, 1871, and 1873. These botanists all 

 acknowledge the great help they derived in their work from the 

 labour already expended on it by Dr. Thwaites. Mr. Mitteu 

 remarks on the new mosses — " As many of the species had already 

 been clearly distinguished by Dr. Thwaites, it has been arranged 

 that our joint names should be attached to them, which appears 

 to me a very small tribute to the energy with which he has inves- 

 tigated the flora of Ceylon." With the exception of a short 

 note, printed in 1877, on ISchweudeuer's then recently propounded 

 theory of the nature of Lichens, which Dr. Thwaites could not 

 accept, he contributed nothing further to botanical literature. 



A sufficient reason, apart from advancing age, for this partial 

 cessation from scientific activity, is to be found in the steadily 

 increasing change in the character of his official position : the 



