17 
nating mind, fitted him in an eminent degree for 
the study of nature. No man ever loved that sci- 
ence more, nor derived more satisfaction from the 
goodness and wisdom of the Creator as displayed 
in his works, to which he was constantly recurring. 
To the more difficult parts of British botany he had 
given peculiar attention, especially to the Mosses 
and Fungi, but above all to the Willows, a tribe of 
plants, which, however important in an ceconomical 
point of view, may be said, before his time, to have 
been almost entirely unknown to botanists, so con- 
fused were their ideas concerning them. 
“In public life Mr. Crowe was a warm and stre- 
nuous assertor of the genuine old English Whig 
principles; to which he was attached by early edu- 
cation, extensive reading and experience, but espe- 
cially by his uncommon acuteness of judgement and 
manliness of sentiment, for 
* Never Briton more disdain’d a slave.’” 
Mr. John Pitchford, another of his early associates, 
“ was one of a school of botanists in Norwich among 
whom the writings and merits of Linnzus were per- 
haps more early, or at least more philosophically, 
studied and appreciated, than in any part of Britain.” 
Of this school was Mr. Hugh Rose, “who to 
much classical learning added a systematic and phy- 
siological turn of mind.” In 1780 a gutta serena 
deprived him of sight. This affliction he bore with 
exemplary patience ; for though with the loss of his 
external visual organs he lost his darling amusement, 
“no one,” observes Sir James, “could ever derive 
more consolation from looking within.” 
VOL, I. c 
