LDiTNEAJr SOCIETY OF LONDOX. Ixxix 



eight under Dr. Seeniann's name ; the first there given is one on 

 descriptive botany in the Hegensburg ' Flora ' for 1844. 



Dr. Seemann started last summer for Nicaragua "with some mis- 

 givings, having suffered severely from fever on his last previous visit. 

 He, however, reached Javali at the end of July, after a rough 

 journey through the swamps, in good health, but in the middle of 

 September he was seized with fever. From this he never rallied ; his 

 death, which happened after three weeks' illness, on October 10th, 

 1871, was somewhat sudden, and under circumstances which pointed 

 towards some cardiac complication. The next day his body was 

 buried close by his house at the mine, in the little patch of industry 

 and civilization his energy had called into existence in the primeval 

 forest, and surrounded by the tropical vegetation he knew so well. 

 Dr. Seemann was elected a Fellow of this Society on the 16th of 

 November, 1852. 



James De Carle Sowerby was the eldest son of James Sowerby, 

 the founder of the scientific race of his name. His mother was a 

 De Carle who belonged to a French family settled in Norwich. 

 James Sowerby, tFe father, was the author of the ' English Botany,' 

 upon which great work almost aU the Sowerbys have laboured, but 

 none more assiduously than the subject of this memoir, who took it up 

 in his own name on the death of his father in 1822. He in the same 

 manner continued the equally celebrated * Mineral Conchologj\' 

 It is no injustice to the several eminent botanists who, from Sir 

 James Smith downwards, have been associated with the Sowerbys 

 in the ' English Botany ' in furnishing the literary descriptions of 

 the plants, to say that the great and enduring scientific merit of the 

 work consists in the figures. These, in fact, not only reproduce the 

 plants as they appear in nature to the uninstrueted eye, but they 

 exhibit all the chief structural details which the scientific naturahst 

 demands. These remain for ever, whilst descriptions and classifica- 

 tions are doomed to change. 



The life of James De Carle Sowerby was spent from boyhood in 

 intimate association with scientific and literary circles. As a lad 

 his passion was chemistry, and he enjoyed the friendship of Faraday 

 as a fellow-student. He was received as a favourite in the houses 

 of Dawson Turner, the Hookers, Dr. Wollaston, Sir Joseph Banks, 

 and many other distinguished naturalists. At an early period of 

 his life he conceived the idea of founding the classification of 

 minerals upon their chemical composition. He believed that che- 

 mistry might offer a better basis of classification than the forms of 



