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JAMES BACKHOUSE. 51 
` Nyl., * with spores 0023-36 mm. long, 0-009-13 mm. thick."—On 
bark of Hollies in New Forest, perhaps not unfrequent. 
JAMES BACKHOUSE. 
We have, this month, to mourn the ioss of one of our veteran 
. British botanists, a keen field-observer at home during nearly sixty 
years, and one of the pioneers in the exploration of our southern 
colonies, ——Mr. James Backhouse, of York, who died at his residence, 
Holgate House, in the suburbs of that city, on the 20th of January, at 
the age of seventy-four. 
He belonged to a family well known in Durham and the neighbour- 
ing counties, during several generations, as members of the Society of 
Friends, and for the prominent part they have taken in promoting 
the commercial prosperity of that now thriving district, three of the 
centres of which are amongst the newly enfranchised parliamentary 
boroughs,—the one to which Mr. Backhouse belonged, Darlington, 
having returned a member of his family as its first representative. 
Under the encouragement of his relative, Edward Robson, known as a 
correspondent of Sir J. E. Smith, he and his brothers learned, when 
very young, to take an interest in the plants of their neighbourhood, 
and formed a herbarium. He was apprenticed to a chemist and 
druggist in Darlington, but a severe cold, caught whilst distilling 
Mint, developed into pulmonary consumption, and for some time his 
life was despaired of, but by complete cessation from work, change of 
air, and a lengthened stay with a relative in a healthy country district, 
this was fortunately arrested. Left too delicate to follow any sedentary 
occupation, his love of botany led him to gardening, and he went to 
learn his business at Norwich, and stayed there a year or two. Here 
he made the acquaintance of Sir William Hooker, and sometimes 
shared his botanical rambles, as on an occasion of which we have 
heard him tell when they went to seek Hippophaé, near Cromer, and 
forgot to take any sandwiches, and had great difficulty in getting any- 
thing to eat and drink. 
Between 1820 and 1830 he married, and began business at York 
as a nurseryman, in partnership with one of his brothers, and he con- 
sidered the old cathedral city as his home for the rest of his life. He 
gradually began to take an active part as a volunteer minister in the 
