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received from him on various subjects, only three, or at the most 
five, have the date of the year written. 
Ever ready to hold out a helping hand to any student of either 
branch of Science which he loved, a desire for knowledge or 
information was the chief passport to his acquaintance. Asa 
friend wrote to me “I have pleasant memories of many years of 
kindly help in our pursuits, sweetened by an old-world courtesy 
and goodness all his own.” 
One of the greatest pleasures which cheered his latter days was 
the receipt in his 92nd year of a congratulatory address engrossed 
on vellum from the Fellows of the Linnean Society. The occasion 
was the attaining the seventieth anniversary of his election. 
An event unprecedented in the annals of that or of, perhaps, any 
other Society; (as the 71 Fellows whose signatures were 
attached stated). ‘The Father of the Linnean Society ” as they 
addressed him was not a little proud of being remembered by 
his children in his declining years, and wrote one of his 
eloquently simple replies, full of dignity and truthful expressions 
of his gratitude for present courtesies and touching reminiscences 
of departed friendships. 
The address and reply are printed in the last number of the 
Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club’s Proceedings 
and I call to mind the nervous anxiety expressed lest in the copy 
I was permitted to make some mistake should appear. 
The last entry in “ ra weps euavrov” is peculiarly touching, and 
may be a fitting conclusion to these extracts. 
“1892—Began the year in fairly good health, On May 25th 
entered my 93rd year. Mind still sound and active; able to write a 
little essay on ‘the Life of the world to come, which I considered a 
fit subject for reflection in the case of an old man so soon to pass 
“behind the veil.’ In the Autumn of this year I received a striking 
mark of attention from the Linnean Society, on the occasion of my 
having been a member for seventy years ; viz., a congratulatory Letter 
or ‘Address on Illuminated Vellum’ framed and glazed with the 
