92 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
Rev. W. H. Coleman and Miss Kirby (already mentioned), the Rev. 
Churchill Babington, D.D., Fellow of St. John’s College and Professor 
of Archeology, Cambridge, and the Rev. Andrew Bloxam of T'wycross 
and Harborough Magna, near Rugby. He had been the naturalist on 
board the frigate Blonde, in the Pacific Ocean in 1824-25. He was 
Coleman’s chief colleague and he prepared the list of plants for T. R. 
Potters’ book on Charnwood Forest.'? Others mentioned are the Rev. 
Charles Cardale Babington, Professor of Botany, Cambridge; James 
Harley, a well-known local naturalist; James Francis Hollings; the late 
Rev. R. W. McCall, F. T. Mott; and John Plant. 
The editors of the Flora stated that they owed the chapter on ‘ Algze’ to 
Mr. Frederick Bates, a brother of ‘ Bates of the Amazon,’ and that they 
had adopted, with some alterations, the chapter on ‘ Geography and 
Hydrography ’ from the manuscript of the late Rev. W. H. Coleman. 
Mr. Frederick Bates is also named in a comparatively long list of 
those who helped the editors in their third period from 1850 to 1886. 
In writing of this period the editors were to a great extent writing of 
the work of themselves and of their contemporaries. One of them, 
Frederick Thompson Mott, is remarkable in many ways in the history of 
the Society. He was its President twice: in the sessions 1874~75 and 
1890-91. He was chairman of the Section then named ‘ Natural 
History,’ and later ‘ Biology,’ from 1879-80 to 1895-96, except for two 
sessions, 1891-92, in which the Rev. 'T. A. Preston was chairman, and 
1892-93, in which Mr. Thomas Carter was chairman. Mr. Mott’s 
subjects were generally botanical or zoological ; but sometimes literature, 
art, or philosophy. In March 1878, in a lecture to the Society entitled 
‘A Modern Theory of the Universe,’ he ‘ proceeded to lay before his 
audience the outline of a theory which, he contended, preserved all the 
old truth, while at the same time it cast off all the worn-out garments, 
and added a great deal that was necessary to bring it up to date.’ ... It 
might seem to those who had been accustomed to regard matter as a real 
and substantial thing, and energy as something altogether different, 
that this theory which made active energy the only substance in the 
universe was a mere dreamer’s speculation, but they must remember 
that it was little more than a modern development of the conclusions of 
such well-known thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Bishop 
Berkeley. In conclusion Mr. Mott said that in his judgment ‘ the 
evolution of the organic world and the puzzling problems of social life 
were much more rationally explained by this philosophy than by the 
laws of natural selection and political economy as now understood.’ 
11 The Rev. William Higgins Coleman was a master in Christ’s Hospital School 
at Hertford ; he was part author of a book on the Flora of Hertfordshire. In 
1847 he came to the Grammar School of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He contributed 
notes upon mosses and flowering plants to the Flora of the district surrounding 
Tutbury and Burton-on-Trent, by Edwin Brown in Sir Oswald Mozley’s Natural 
History of Tutbury, 1863. The writer of the article on him in the Dictionary of 
National Biography does not seem to have known of his manuscript Flora of 
Leicestershire. 
12 The Rev. Andrew Bloxam is also in the D.N.B.. It is there said of him ; 
‘ He may be regarded as perhaps the last of the all-round British naturalists.’ 
