1852.] Linnean Society. 183 



ampton, and finally in 1836 at Ryde in the Isle of Wight, where he 

 established his head-quarters during the remainder of his life. In 

 the last-named year he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and 

 from this time forward he determined to make the Hampshire Flora, 

 and especially that of the Isle of Wight, the principal object of his 

 study. In the pursuit of this object many of us have had personal 

 opportunities of witnessing and admiring the zeal, energy and en- 

 thusiasm with which he devoted himself to his favourite task. Of 

 the botanical value of his researches iuto the flora of his native 

 county some idea may be formed from the series of papers contri- 

 buted by him to the ' Phytologist,' under the title of " Notes and 

 occasional Observations on some of the rarer British Plants growing 

 wild in Hampshire ;" and there is good reason to hope that the 

 ' Flora of Hampshire,' to which they were intended as the prelude, 

 may, with some assistance from his surviving botanical friends, be 

 speedily sent to the press. In 1842 he paid a visit of some weeks 

 to the South and West of Ireland; in 1844 he embarked for the 

 West Indies, and passed six months, chiefly in Trinidad and Jamaica ; 

 and in 1846 he made a tour of more than a year's duration in Canada 

 and the United States of America, extending westwards as far as 

 St. Louis on the Missouri, and southwards to New Orleans. His 

 last journey was also one of considerable extent, as well as of diffi- 

 culty and danger, and finally proved too much for his constitutional 

 strength. In September 1850 he left England for Egypt, and 

 ascended the Nile as far as Khartoum, at the junction of the White 

 and Blue Niles, from whence he returned to Cairo, after an absence 

 of seven months. In the neighbourhood of the latter city he made 

 various excursions, some of them considerable, and then directed his 

 course to Syria. After visiting Jerusalem and other parts of the 

 Holy Land, he proceeded to Baalbec and Damascus, with which 

 places he proposed to close his Eastern travels, and then to return 

 immediately to England. But on his arrival at Damascus he was 

 seized with a malignant typhus which carried him off on the 9th of 

 October, in the past year, at the age of 51 ; and thus perished, in the 

 prime of life, and far from his family and friends, a most zealous and 

 enthusiastic naturalist, and a most amiable and excellent man. 



John George Children, Esq., F.R.S.L. <^ E., F.S.A. 8; Hon. 

 M.C.P.S., was the only son of a gentleman of considerable landed 

 property, who was also a Bencher of the Middle Temple, but never 

 practised at the Bar, and was born at Ferox Hall, in the town of 

 Tunbridge, on the 18th of May 1777. He was educated first at the 

 Grammar-school of Tunbridge, afterwards at Eton, and under a pri- 



