132 IN MEMORIAM—HENRY BOSWELL. 
who used to be the first to shoot anything of the kind th 
appeared on their land. In consequence of this I am ph 
to say that in many parts Owls have increased. considerably 
in numbers during the last few years, and, as a natural consequé . 
the mice are kept from increasing too rapidly and becoming — 
a pest. : : 
Bun Wemoriam. 
——— 
HENRY BOSWELL. 
We grieve, in common with muscologists in all parts of the world, 
to note the decease, and at no advanced age, of this kindly and 
ever-helpful expert in that department of Cryptogamic Botany 
had made so peculiarly his own. He was a profound bryologist 
and his unrivalled knowledge of exotic mosses helped to make 
the acknowledged expert in British bryology that he ever 
himself to be. In 1873 he issued a Catalogue of British Mosses 
his own, having the previous year published a painstaking paper of 
-*The Mosses of Oxfordshire and the Neighbourhood of Ox0™ 
(afterwards reprinted) in the ‘Journal of Botany.’ In 1877 ® 
conjunction with Mr. C. P. Hobkirk, F.L.S., Mr. Boswell drew 4 
for the Botanical Record Club the first edition of the ‘ London 
Catalogue of Mosses,’ based upon Jaeger’s Arrangement; and ths 
being exhausted, in 1881 a much fuller and more precise list followe® 
the Mosses herein being entirely the work of Mr. Boswell, who, hor 
ever, to the end of his working career was rather a zealous $ 
than a publishing professor able also to wield that sword of 
ready writer—a goose’s quill. Mr. Boswell’s special qual 
special veneration to the moss-mad tyro. ‘The writer can 
feelingly on this point, although, after years of correspondenc 
only met him, in Oxford, for the first and last time in 1883- ae 
Space will not permit of any really adequate notice of a ee 
what remarkable man, an Oxford city shopkeepe?— he eo 
a saddler—and yet so deeply imbrued in the spirit of is _ 
and scholarship ; and indeed we of the north knew of him fa 
a staff for moss-students to lean upon in their weariness than 4 
whose writings concerned our group of North-English counties: 
F, A. LE 
