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our knowledge of South African Fungi and Lichens. He was a 
skilful microscopist, and gradually accumulated a fair amount of 
literature on the branches of Botany in which he was interested, 
besides a large amount of authentic material for comparison ; but he 
very seldom liked to assume the responsibility of describing new 
species of plants, of which he discovered quite a host. He always 
preferred to send them to some specialist, frequently with complete 
diagnosis. From the time with which we are dealing dates 
approximately also his association with Dr. H. Bolus, who was then 
residing at Graa inet 
ten a day (Sundays and public holidays included), but he had been 
set impossible tasks. ii i i 
At the College there were no 
instruments, no books and no other aids in teaching. He supplied 
the most necessary things at his own expense. In those days the 
study of Botany did not “ pay” in the Uuivaritty examinations at 
the Cape, and in any case the number of students would have been 
small. That the classes had to be given up after about half a 
dozen years was not altogether his fault. He had to submit to the 
force of circumstances. One of his former pupils, Dr. Juritz, in 
describing this phase of MacOwan’s activities, in the South African 
Journal of Science (Vol. I, 3) says: “In facility of illustration and 
apt quotation he was not easily matched, and, when some obscure 
point needed elucidation, he was as ready with a humorous anecdote 
at one moment as he was with an appropriate passage from the 
Greek classics at another. Now it would omer, and then 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, for with both he had an equally intimate 
