70 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Miss Ellen Hutchins. daughter of Thomas Hutchins, was born in 1785. at 

 Ballyliekey, between Bantry and Glengarriif, in the County of Cork, and 

 died in 1815, and was buried in Bantry churchyard. She was educated in 

 Dublin, and when her schooltime was ended, her health was found to be 

 unsatisfactory. Dr. Whitley Stokes, a friend of her family, who was con- 

 sulted about the case, recommended her being left in his care. It was so 

 arranged, and she soon recovered. When finally leaving for home, Dr. Stokes 

 advised her to live in the open air as much as possible, and to this end to take 

 up the study of some branch of natural history, by preference that of 

 botany, which was his own speciality, and he offered to lend her books into 

 which she had been dipping whilst in his house, where also she had become 

 acquainted with Mr. Mackay of Glasnevin Gardens, and Mr. Dawson Turner 

 of Yarmouth. This would provide exercise and fresh air and quiet occupation 

 while indoors. She became an ardent student of mosses, hepaties. lichens, 

 and algae, which abound on the hills, in the glens, or in the sea, around 

 Bantry and Glengarrifl'. She discovered many rare species of all these in 

 the neighbourhood near her home, and made many drawings for Turner's 

 "Fuci." 



A trait in her character was her natural modesty, which was so great that 

 for some time she objected to her name being published as the collector of the 

 rare plants she had found. 



Sir -Tames Smith wrote of her that " she could find almost anything." 

 Turner in the conclusion of his " Fuci " (1819) laments her untimely death 

 at the early age of thirty years, and says that by it he had been deprived of 

 a most able assistant, and botany had lost a votary as indefatigable as she 

 was acute, and as successful as she was indefatigable. Sir William J. Hooker 

 in ■' Muscologia Britannica " (1817) acknowledges assistance received from 

 Miss Hutchins in the preparation of that work. 



David Moore writes in the introduction to his " Synopsis of the Mosses oi 

 Ireland," Proceedings of Boyal Irish Academy (1872), that William Wilson 

 notices in his " Bryologia Britannica " some species of mosses which were not 

 included by Dr. Taylor in Part 2 of Mackay's " Flora Hibernica," but which 

 Wilson had found when examining the herbaria of Dawson Turner and 

 Sir William J. Hooker, to whom these plants had been sent by the late 

 Miss Hutchins of Bantry. " whose name is well known to all cryptogamic 

 botanists, both here and abroad." " To form some idea of her great success 

 amongst the Hepaticae we have only to consult the pages of Hooker's 

 ■ Jungermaniae.' where her name is more or less connected with nearly every 

 rare species contained in that grand work." 



In the 'Journal of Botany," February, 1912, p. 63, under the title 



