149 



" no liberty of action." Of course when a large party is wending 

 its way, on foot or by rail, to some pre-arranged place or object of 

 attraction, gentlemen can hardly be expected to make any long 

 stand, whilst one stops to search for fossils in a particular stratum 

 unexpectedly met with — another to look for some particular 

 plant. Stationary work of this kind is best done at other times. 

 Accordingly it was apart from the Club, on different occasions^ 

 that Broome and myself collected by degrees all the rarer plants 

 growing in the Bath district, besides discovering several new ones 

 not mentioned in Babington's " Flora Bathoniensis." * Fine 

 specimens of all of them are preserved in the Herbarium, in the 

 Jenyns Library, at the Bath Literary Institution. 



But Broome was not merely a local collector, he was a general 

 botanist ; he had been in Italy and some other parts of the Con- 

 tinent, where he had made himself acquainted with foreign plants, 

 many specimens of which are preserved in his Herbarium. The 

 particular department of botany, however, in which he worked 

 hardest, and to which he had given his chief attention for a long 

 term of years before his death, was that of Mycology, perhaps the 

 most difficult class in the Cryptogamia, and one which very few 

 botanists attempt to take up as a special pursuit. The " Pro- 

 ceedings " of our Club are enriched by several of his papers 

 relating to the Fungi of the Bath district, and a collection of the 

 same was placed by him many years back in the Duncan Local 

 Museum. 



In the study of this obscure and difficult tribe of plants, he was 

 often associated with the Eev. M. J. Berkeley, celebrated for his 

 works and papers on Mosses and Fungi, and who, as a Crypto- 

 gamist, stands as high as any name in this country or abroad. 

 Berkeley, until his health failed, was a visitor at Elmhurst most 



* In the supplement to the " Flora Bathoniensis," published in 

 1839, Babington mentions Broome as one of the parties from whom he 

 had derived much assistance in his work. 



