162 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



turned out to be John Stuart Mill, known, perhaps, to few as an 

 ardent field botanist. On another occasion, in 1866, Trimen had the 

 good fortune to discover, at Stain es, Wolffia arrhiza, which was new 

 to the British Flora, and which is remarkable as the smallest known, as 

 it is, perhaps, the smallest possible, of flowering plants. As the work 

 proceeded, we derived much assistance and encouragement from the 

 Eev. W. W. Newbould and the Hon. J. Leicester Warren (afterwards 

 Lord de Tabley), both of whom are dead. 



We soon found that the task we had undertaken, if an interesting, 

 was by no means an easy one. The continuous growth of London 

 gradually obliterates the natural vegetation. Areas long since covered 

 with houses had been the hunting ground of some of the fathers of 

 English botany, such as Turner, L'Obel, and Gerarde. We were 

 therefore obliged to engage in an exhaustive study of all the records 

 of Middlesex plants to be found in botanical literature, from the 

 earliest times, and to spend a considerable amount of labour in 

 reducing their names to modern equivalents. 



The result was sufficiently striking and of some scientific import- 

 ance. Although only 141 square miles in area, and, at first sight, 

 far from promising any but moderate results, we obtained, either from 

 trustworthy records, most of which we were successful in confirming, 

 or from our own observations, definite evidence of the ' occurrence 

 in the county of 826 species out of a total in the British Isles of 

 1425, and some material additions have since been made to our 

 enumeration. 



The Flora was published under our joint names in 1869. Critics 

 have amiably described it as " an epoch-making book in the history of 

 British botany," and " a model for subsequent compilers of local 

 floras." I have the less hesitation in acquiescing in these favourable 

 judgments, as the book owes its merits almost entirely to Trimen's 

 labours. The task fell upon him of writing out the manuscript for the 

 press, and condensing the large accumulations of notes and observa- 

 tions into a lucid and critical summary, and this he accomplished with 

 the fidelity and judgment which always characterised his work. He 

 added, what was entirely his own, a careful study of the life and work 

 of the early London botanists ; and this is a valuable contribution to 

 an obscure branch of scientific history. 



Trimen entered the Medical School of King's College early in 1860. 

 After spending 1864 in Edinburgh, where he followed the clinical 

 instruction of Professor Bennett, he took the degree of M.B. with 

 honours at the University of London. He acted for a time as District 

 Officer of Health in the Strand District during a cholera epidemic, and 

 also filled the post for some years of Curator of the Medical Museum 

 at King's College, and that of Lecturer on Botany at St. Mary's 



