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XX.—MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
Mr. A. J. Toornron, a member of the gardening staff of the 
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has been appointed by the Secretary 
of State for the Colonies, on the recommendation of Kew, Assistant 
Superintendent of the Botanical and Forestry Department, 
Hong Kong. sine 
JoHN Firmincer DutTute.—On the 23rd February last there 
died at West Worthing, Sussex, one of the oldest of the corre- 
spondents of Kew. For some years he had been in poor health 
so that his visits had not been so frequent as formerly. But he 
had always been held in great regard by the Staff and frequenters 
of the Herbarium, and the news of his death was received by 
them with great sorrow and regret. 
J. F. Duthie was born on the 12th May, 1845, the son of the 
Rev. A. H. Duthie, Rector successively of Sittingbourne and 
Deal. He was educated at Marlborough College and at Jesus 
College, Cambridge, where he took the B.A. degree in 1867 with 
a 3rd class in the Natural Science Tripos. After leaving College 
he spent some time as a tutor in Somersetshire and then travelled 
with his mother and sister in Italy, living chiefly at Florence. 
He collected specimens largely, both in Italy and also in the 
islands of Malta and Gozo, and he published, chiefly in the 
“ Journal of Botany,” accounts of the Flora of those islands and 
of that of Tuscany and Monte Generoso in the Italian Lake 
country. It was a most unfortunate circumstance that all his 
valuable collections made at the time were lost in a fire at a 
repository in Scotland where they had been stored. He was 
then, for a time, Professor of Natural History at the Royal 
Agricultural College at Cirencester, and in 1875 he was elected 
a Fellow of the Linnean Society. 
In 1876 Duthie was offered by Lord Salisbury, then Secretary 
of State for India, and accepted, the post of Superintendent of 
the Botanic Garden at Saharanpur in the North-Western Pro- 
vinces of India, vacant by the retirement of Dr. W. Jameson. 
In those days the Garden of Saharanpur was for the Upper 
Gangetic Plain what that at Calcutta was for the Lower country 
and the regions bordering the Bay of Bengal, and Duthie at 
once set to work to carry on the labours of distinguished pre- 
decessors like Doctors Royle, Falconer, King and Jameson. He 
spent 27 years in that appointment, retiring in 1903, and during 
to Kew, the British Museum, Edinburgh, Calcutta and elsewhere 
and to private friends. 
