94 SHORT NOTES. 



with cliaracteristic bitterness : — '' I find Cape Town much the 

 same, but so many of the rascally settlers in it that I have no in- 

 ducement to join in chance company. Those wretches are ashamed 

 of their radicalism, and swear through the world that they are 

 pure, independent, respectable Englishmen." His hopes of finding 

 employment as the manager of a botanic garden, then much talked 

 of, but not started till some years subsequently, were disappointed, 

 and he seems by all accounts to have led an aimless, irregular life, 

 often in great poverty, always complaining of ill-treatments, lack 

 of patronage and appreciation. It was his wont to boast largely of 

 his services to science, forgetting that all he had done was to fetch 

 and carry for pay. The vainglorious character of the man is well 

 illustrated by the volumes of pen-and-ink tracings of the plants in 

 the * Botanical Magazine,' which he used to exhibit as original 

 sketches of plants discovered by him. Towards the close of a 

 wasted life he was, more of a matter of charitable commiseration 

 than for any personal usefulness, employed as gardener by Mr. 

 K. H. Arderne, of Claremont, in whose nominal service he died, 

 30th June, 1869. 



Dr. A. H. Haworth coupled this collector's name with a series 

 of plants originally forming part of the genus Aloe, but subsequent 

 writers, deeming the grounds of separation insuflicient, the name 

 Bowiea was dropped. Dr. W. H. Harvey, who, as a resident of the 

 Cape, had some knowledge of Bowie, resuscitated the name in a 

 monotypic Eastern liliaceous genus. Bowiea volubilis Harv. is 

 figured in the ' Botanical Magazine,' tab. 5619 ; it was not, how- 

 ever, discovered by the collector whose name it bears, but by 

 Mr. Henry Hutton, in the neighbourhood of the old Katberg 

 convict station, and has since been gathered in many other places, 

 particularly in Kafirland. 



SHOET NOTES. 



Marsupella Stableki Spruce. — Whilst botanizing in May last 

 with Messrs. Sunderland and Byrom near Llyn Ogwen, I found a 

 fine patch of this species in a gully ascending Y Tryfan, above 

 Llyn Bochlwyd. Mr. G. A. Holt foimd it in fine condition on 

 Cader Idris, in June, 1882. Mr. Stabler has also found it on Ben 

 Mac Dhui, July, 1884. These, I believe, are the only stations for 

 this rare species, with the exception of those already recorded — 

 Bowfell, where it was discovered by Mr. Stabler, and Langdale 

 Valley, where it was collected in quantity by Mr. Stabler and 

 myself, and distributed in ' Hep. Brit. Exsicc' I was again 

 fortunate in finding in the Ogwen Valley abundance of the rare 

 Lejeimea microscojnca Tayl. in several stations. — W. H. Peaeson. 



A new British Festuca. — Last summer I found a grass growing 

 on sandy soil, under trees, at Witley, Surrey, which at once struck 

 me as peculiar. It varied in height from 2 to 4 ft. ; the root-leaves 

 being very numerous, capillary- triangular, and sometimes a foot in 

 length; the upper stem-leaves flat, narrow (about 1 line broad), 



