BOTANICAL NEWS. 199 
. We regret to anuounce the death of Admiral Fitzroy, E.N., F.E.S., who died 
by his own hand, April 30th. His name survives in Eotany in Fitzroya Fata* 
gonica, a singiJar Coniferous genus, and as the commander of the expedition of 
the * Beagle/ wliich Mr. Charles Darwin's account has contributed to render 
famt)U3. The late Admiral had for some time been depressed in spirits, partly 
caused by anxiety in trying to render the infant science of meteorology, while 
not yet in proper working order, practically available. 
Messrs. E. T. Higgins and W. Gr. Cutter have left Liverpool, on the 30th 
ultimo, for the West Indies, where they intend to remain about six or eight 
months, for the purpose of exploring the flora and fauna of those islands. 
They will carry with them some newly-constructed dredges for obtaining shells, 
star-fish, etc., from deep water. 
We grieve to announce the death of one of our most esteemed contributors, 
Mr. Alexander Smith, Curator of the Herbarium at Kew, which took place on 
the 15th of May, in the thirty-third year of his age. The loss which botany 
has sustained by his premature death cannot be estimated by the few article* 
which bear his signature, but rather by the vast amount of knowledge 
which dies with him. Tlae leading idea of his botanical faith was that our 
science was something more than an accumulation of dry technicalities, and 
that the time had come when it had to be made manifest to our practical age 
that botany had a direct bearing upon the weal and woe of mankind. The 
uses of plants, economic botany, in its widest sense, deeply engaged his 
attention, and we may assert, without the fear of contradiction, that there was 
no one who had a better or sounder knowledge of this subject, or took a 
keener delight in collecting and verifying every scrap of information bearing 
upon it, a labour greatly facihtated by his being a good systematic botanist. 
His object was to publish a comprehensive. work on all the useful plants of the 
world ; and had he been able to find a publisher, or received any encourage- 
ment, merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, pharmacologists, and other 
practical men might now be able to dispense with the wretched compi- 
lations brought out by half-educated scribblers. The manuscripts he leaves 
behind amount to more than thirty closely-written volumes, all the articles 
being carefully and systematically arranged. There is besides a work on * Com- 
mercial Botany,' which seems to be quite ready for press. Mr. Smith has also 
been an active contributor to Moore and Lindley's ' Treasury of Botany,' a 
companion volume to Maunder's * Treasury of Knowledge/ and about to be 
published by Messrs, Longman ; and he added to Mr. Markham's well-known 
* Travels in Peru and India' a valuable treatise * On the Plants employed in 
India on account of their real or supposed Febrifugal Virtues.' To this 
Journal he contributed several articles which bear his signature, and several 
anonymous notices. At the time of his death he was actively engaged in 
writing a work on Orchids, a subject he had studied deeply. The outlines of 
his life may be briefly told. He was bom on the 17th of December, 1832, and 
was the son of Mr, John Smith, the now retired Curator of the Eoyal Botanic 
Gardens, at Kew, well known to science as one of the leading pteridologists of 
the day. At eight years of age Alexander Smith was sent to boarding-school 
at Eichmond, and afterwards to the Isle ofWight, where, in 1816, a nervous 
