154 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb.. 



as he did. It is even less probable that one will be found who is able 

 to render such services with like tact and good humour. 



" Few men have enjoyed life more, still fewer have used it 

 better." 



C. H. H. 



RICHARD SPRUCE. 

 Born 1817. Died December 29, 1893. 



THE botanical world has sustained an irreparable loss in the death 

 of the famous botanist and traveller, Richard Spruce, who 

 succumbed to an attack of influenza on the 29th of December last. 

 Mr. Spruce was born in the year 1817, and was a native of the North 

 Riding. It is nearly fifty years since he published his first paper, 

 which dealt with the Mosses and Hepatics of Teesdale. Shortly 

 afterwards he spent a year in the Pyrenees, collecting the flowering 

 and cryptogamic plants of that region ; his paper on the Mosses and 

 Hepatics, published in 1849, was a very valuable addition to our 

 knowledge of the European flora. In the same year he went out to 

 South America, and travelled up the river Amazon, making extensive 

 botanical collections. During two years he was, more or less, with 

 Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace ; and, when the latter came home, Mr. 

 Spruce proceeded up the Rio Negro, crossed over to the Orinoco, 

 returned to the Rio Negro, and exploring various of its tributaries, 

 gradually made his way up into the Andes. Here he received a 

 commission from the India Office to collect seeds and plants of the 

 Cinchona, which was then rapidly becoming exterminated. In this 

 he was most successful, and hundreds of young plants were safely 

 transferred under the fostering care of Mr. Robert Cross from the 

 western slope of Chimborazo to India, and established in the 

 Himalaya. Mr. Spruce's travels are described at some length in the 

 J ouyiial of Botany between the years 1849 and 1864. He returned to 

 England in 1863 a permanent invalid. His collections stand unrivalled, 

 both in the immense number and the beautiful completeness of the 

 specimens. His bad health prevented him from working out more 

 than the Palms and the Hepatics. Mr. Bentham did the Phanerogams ; 

 Mr. Mitten the Mosses ; the Rev. W. A. Leighton the Lichens ; and 

 the Rev. M. J. Berkeley the Fungi. Mr. Spruce's Hepatics of the 

 Amazons and Andes occupies the whole of vol. xv. of the Trans. Bot. 

 Soc. Edinburgh, and is a novel and most scientific treatment of the 

 subject. The majority of his other papers were devoted to his 

 favourite study — the Hepatics. The last thirty years of his life, 

 rendered grievous by his chronic state of ill-health, were spent at 

 Coneysthorpe, in North Yorkshire, where he died at the close of 1893, 

 at the age of 76. 



