io8 Country Rambles. 



as a naturalist of the most varied and accurate informa- 

 tion, and as one of the most scientific and successful 

 prosecutors of microscopical research, than as a singularly 

 skilful artist in photography, and this without letting the 

 colours grow dry upon the palette from which he has 

 been accustomed to transfer them to coveted drawings. 

 It was Mr. Sidebotham who first drew the attention of 

 Manchester naturalists to the fresh-water algae of our 

 district, and who principally determined their forms and 

 numbers. He also it was who collected the principal 

 portion known up to 1858 of the local Diatomacece. 

 During the five or six years he devoted to the botany of 

 Bredbury, Reddish, and the banks of the Tame generally, 

 he added no fewer than twenty-five species to the Man- 

 chester Flora, many of them belonging to the difficult 

 genera Rubus and Carex. His walks were not often 

 solitary. What a broiling day was that on which we 

 first gathered in the Reddish valley the great white 

 cardamine! what a sweet forenoon that vernal one 

 when we stood contemplating the thousand anemones ! 

 Nature seems to delight again in upsetting everything 

 human ! One cannot even bestow a name, but she tries 

 to undermine it. No epithet is more appropriate, as a 

 rule, to this most modest of the anemone race, the wild 

 English one, than its specific name, nemorosa, "inhabit- 

 ing the groves;" every reader of classical verse recalls, 

 as the eye glides over the word, the nemus which grew 

 greener wherever Phyllis set her foot in it. Giving her 

 the least chance, see, nevertheless, how the wayward 



