lx. THE FLORA OF HALIFAX. 



Samuel King died on January ioth, 1888, and was interred 

 at Butts Green Chapel, Warley. I am indebted to his nephew 

 Mr. John King, of Halifax, for many personal details of his life. 



Associated with King was his nephew Charles Eastwood. 

 Born at Halifax in 1839, but brought up with his uncle, he 

 soon as a boy took an interest in botany, and 

 Charles assisted King in mounting and labelling his 



Eastwood, specimens. From sixteen to eighteen he was a 

 gardener at Stansfield Hall, and became a 

 member of the Todmorden Botanical Society. Then for two 

 years he was employed at Kew Gardens, after which he 

 returned to Luddenden and took up the Lane House nurseries. 

 He died on December 21st, 1895. His name frequently 

 appears as the authority for Halifax plants in Miall's Flora. 



Going back somewhat, we find a number of active botanists 

 at Todmorden, of whom John Nowell was the most eminent. 

 He was born at Springs, near Harley Wood, in 

 John 1802. At a very early age he was employed as a 



Nowell. winder, at nine he began to weave, and afterwards 

 became a twister-in, and remained such until his 

 death. His love for botany w T as first acquired from Edmund 

 Holt, of Lumbutts, the father of the Todmorden School of 

 Botanists, and such education as he received w 7 as mostly gained 

 from a grammar class at Shore Chapel, taught by the Rev. 

 John Midgley. He died October 28th, 1867, at White Hart 

 Fold, and was interred at Cross-stone Church. A 

 monument was erected to his memory in the old Church- 

 yard at Todmorden by his fellow botanists. The Manchester 

 Guardian for November 5th, 1867, contains an account of 

 his labours, and Mr. Abraham Stansfield, jun., devotes a 

 chapter " A Lancashire Moss Gatherer " to him in his 

 " Essays and Sketches." His portrait has been recently 

 hung in the Todmorden Free Library, which also contains his 

 collection of mosses numbering 469 species, of which 147 are 

 local ones. The duplicate specimens were, unfortunately, 

 destroyed. 



Nowell was one of the ablest students of mosses that 

 Yorkshire ever produced. All the Floras of Yorkshire and the 

 West Riding bear witness to his industrious and successful 

 search for mosses, not only in the productive cloughs between 

 Todmorden and Hebden Bridge, but over a much wider field, 

 and his early discoveries have been amply confirmed. In 1836 

 he added the rare moss Cinclidium stygium to the British Flora, 



