201 



AUGUSTIN LEY. 

 (1842-1911.) 



(with portrait.) 



AuGUSTiN Ley, who died at Brampton Lodge, near Eoss, after 

 a few weeks' painful illness, on April 23rd of this year, was 

 born in Hereford on April 3rd, 1842. He was of a Devonshire 

 family, but his father, the Kev. William Henry Ley, after taking 

 First Class Honours at Oxford and becoming Fellow and Tutor 

 of his College, was at that time Head Master of the Cathedral 

 School in Hereford — a post which, owing to rather failing health, 

 he resigned in that year for the incumbency of Sellack with 

 King's Capel, two contiguous parishes on opposite sides of the 

 Wye, near Ross. 



The vicarage at Sellack, built at this time, proved to be 

 Augustin Ley's home for fifty-six out of the sixty-nine years of 

 his very strenuous life.. There, together with his brother William 

 Clement, his senior by about a year (who also took Holy Orders 

 and died some years ago), he was educated and prepared for the 

 University by his father ; and there he afterwards lived, first as 

 curate and then as vicar of the combined parishes, for a further 

 thirty years, to within three years of his death. Indeed, it was 

 only for the four years that he held the curacy of Buxton, imme- 

 ditjtely after his ordination, that he lived out of Herefordshire, or 

 moi 3 than a few miles from Ross and Hereford and the banks of 

 th. Wye. 



^iis father was a great lover of nature, and encouraged his 

 children to seek constant pleasure and recreation in the study of 

 tliL, natural objects around them. But such pleasure and the 

 kii Ired delights of country life were always the relaxation from 

 mo e vigorous intellectual work. That botany took an early place 

 in such recreations is shown by the discovery among Augustin 's 

 papers of a Jiortus siccus dated 1848, with the names of the two 

 brothers and of the plants in a child's writing, but with the 

 plants themselves so well pressed and arranged as to suggest 

 paternal guidance and help. Birds and beasts were also closely 

 observed, and meteorology studied, especially by the elder brother, 

 who became an expert in this branch of science. An intense love 

 of music was early developed, and by Augustin was turned to 

 very profitable account in after years in the training of church 

 choirs far and wide. 



His early taste for botany, first awakened by his father, was 

 afterwards quickened by intercourse with his uncle, the late 

 Augustin Prichard^^of Bristol. I do not know what progress in 

 this there may have been during his time at Oxford, where he 

 entered Christ Church as a scholar and took classical honours — 

 a first in Moderations in 18G2, and a second with his degree in 

 1865, after having previously won the Gaisford Prize for Greek 

 prose. In this connection lie lias related how Dean Liddell, 



Journal of Botany.— Vol 49. [July, 1911.] q 



