lvi. 



THE FLORA OF HALIFAX. 



the whole of the British plants mentioned therein. The 

 report for 1885, after Mr. Craven's death, speaks highly of the 

 care and attention he bestowed on the arrangement of the 

 specimens, " and the careful and methodical way in which they 

 were catalogued, repaired and relabelled." 



In 1896 all the collections in the Museum were presented 

 by the Society to the town, and the Natural History specimens 

 were transferred to Belle Vue, where Leyland's and the other 

 Herbaria are placed in cabinets in the botanical room of the 

 Museum. Though the largest of the three herbaria, it is 

 exceeded in the number of local species by King's. Still there 

 are about 270 flowering plants and ferns from the parish in 

 Leyland's with the locality specified on the label, and a good 

 many others merely stated to be 'frequent,' but clearly of his 

 own gathering and not exchanges. These latter, however, 

 have not been incorporated in this Flora, so that sometimes a 

 very common plant is apparently unrecorded until recent 

 years. Many of the specimens are also undated, but the 

 majority are furnished with dates, the earliest being 18 14 and 

 the latest 1843. The plants are still in a good state of 

 preservation, and some of them are no longer to be found 

 growing within the parish. 



A group of ' working-men naturalists ' next claims 

 attention, of whom Samuel Gibson, of Hebden Bridge, was 

 perhaps the most notable and was somewhat the earliest, 



though they were all contemporaneous. As 

 Samuel the details of his life and pursuits have been 



Gibson. previously printed, there is more information 



available, but less necessity to repeat it all here. 

 The son of a whitesmith at Hebden Bridge, Samuel Gibson 

 was born in 1789 or 1790, and was soon put to his father's 

 trade, receiving no education except at a Sunday School. He 

 married at 19, brought up a family of nine, and in later years 

 had to give up his occupation as he was disabled by a fall. 

 So for a time he established himself in a small inn at Mytholm- 

 royd and fitted up a room as a Museum. But this failed to 

 support him and he spent his last years in a cottage near the 

 station, having to part with most of his natural history collec- 

 tions to keep his wife and himself. He died on May 21st, 

 1849, at the age of 59. 



His enthusiasm for all branches of natural history is made 

 evident in the chapter devoted to him in " Where there's a 

 Will there's a Way : An Account of the Labours of Natural- 



