110 THE REV. CHURCHILL BABINGTON, D.D. 



rather than to lay down any general rule. Even if it be admitted 

 that it is desirable to reject a Linnean name when the species is 

 split up into several more or less equal parts, as in the case of 

 Callitnche vema, we think it is better to retain the name when, as 

 in the present case, there is a good distinct widely-distributed plant 

 left after separating from it the comparative rare and local segregate. 

 At any rate we fail to see that we are in a better position by the 

 adoption of the Lamarckian name, anagallidifolium, which was 

 probably intended to be as comprehensive as that of alpinum. 



THE REV. CHURCHILL BABINGTON, D.D. 



CnuRCHn^L Babington was descended from a family for a long 

 time well known in the counties of Derby and Leicester, and in the 

 latter of those counties his ancestor, a cadet of the Derbyshire 

 family, settled early in the sixteenth century. His father was the 

 Rev. Mathew Drake Babington, incumbent of Thringstone in 

 Leicestershire, who was of Trinity College and graduated in 1812, 

 and was an excellent scholar. His son was born at Roecliffe in 

 that county on March 11, 1821, and educated by his father, but 

 was also for a short time a pupil of the late Charles Wyckliffe 

 Goodwin, of Catharine Hall. He gave early attention to Natural 

 History, especially to Botany and Ornithology. On April 16, 

 1839, a paper by him entitled '* Remarks on British Lichens and 

 Fungi," was read before the Linnean Society, of which body he 

 became a Fellow on Jan. 18, 1853. 



He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in October, 1839, 

 and graduated as a Senior Optime and seventh in the first class of 

 the Classical Tripos in 1843. On March 30, 1846, he was elected 

 a Fellow of the College, and immediately afterwards he started on a 

 tour in the south of Europe, visiting his parents at Messina, to 

 which place ill-health had driven his father from his living at 

 Thringstone. He took advantage of this opportunity to make large 

 botanical collections, and also to study the Roman antiquities of 

 Italy. On his return he became a resident Fellow, occupying 

 himself with literary and scientific pursuits. 



In 1847 Mr. Babington rendered much assistance to Dr. (now 

 Sir) J. D. Hooker in monographing the Lichens of the * Flora 

 Antarctica.' His knowledge of the group must then have been already 

 extensive, as Dr. Hooker speaks of his *' profound knowledge of the 

 forms of this difficult order and acquaintance with the most recent 

 writings of European Lichenologists." In 1851 he published, in 

 Hooker's ' Journal of Botany,' an enumeration of the Arctic 

 Lichens collected by Seemann, and he subsequently elaborated the 

 remainder of the Lichens obtained during the voyage of the 

 * Herald,' and published in the volume on the * Botany ' of that 

 expedition. He also enumerated the Lichens obtained in the 

 Himalayas by Strachey and Winterbottom in 1847 and 1848; 

 these, as well as a notice of those collected by Dr. Sutherland 



