LATE WILLIAM CURTIS. Xiil 
But, although it is difficult to find a friend in need, yet such 
a one stepped forward at this juncture in Dr. Lettsome, the 
well-known patron and encourager of all scientific pursuits, 
who had long been a friend and pupil of Mr. Curtis’s ; he 
generously offered to lend him five hundred pounds, with 
which assistance, the work moved on regularly for a time. 
But as Mr. Curtis had kept up the work out of the profits 
of his other concerns, he had rendered himself poor ; and 
on the completion of the sixth fasciculus, making in all 
seventy-two numbers, he closed the work ; partly from its 
being too great an outlay to conduct ; and because his 
health began to decline. (This work, although since con- 
tinued at so great an advance in price, has gone on very 
irregularly, and not been very productive.) 
Although Mr. Curtis’s proposal for reading Lectures 
on Botany to Medical Students, at the Hall of the Apothe- 
caries Company, was approved by the Committee, but not 
carried into effect, he wrote a Course of Lectures, which he 
read to a numerous body of Medical Students, as well as 
persons interested in vegetable economy. 
The manuscript of these Lectures, with the drawings 
to illustrate them, Mr. Curtis gave to his daughter ; which 
coming into the possession of Mr. Samuel Curtis (her hus- 
band) he published them, in three volumes octavo, to match 
the Botanical Magazine in size, which sold very well ; but, 
it is feared, the spirit of them, as delivered by the author, 
was much wanting, as a great deal of his short hand, with 
which they were frequently interlined, could not be made 
out. In these Lectures he was well attended, as well as in 
his herbarizing excursions to a few miles round the environs 
of London; and, at the same time, establishing his Botanic 
Garden at Lambeth Marsh, he seems to have been almost 
_ the first regular teacher of Botany that we have heard of. 
Mr. Curtis now further developed his plan for dissemi- 
nating Botanical knowledge. Having made himself more 
