BOTANICAL NEWS. 383 



at Stafford ; lie subsequently went to Birkenhead, where he was 

 engaged in commercial pursuits, in the intervals of which he 

 devoted much attention to botany. He became a prominent 

 member of the Liverpool Field Naturalists' Club; and in 1S68, 

 when the Club commenced the issue of their lithographed ' Natu- 

 ralists' Scrap-book,' it was he who wrote the pages from which the 

 lithographed copies were taken. In 1866, the ' Scrap-book ' was 

 succeeded by ' The Liverpool Naturalists' Journal,' in connection 

 with which a ' Flora of Liverpool ' was issued, of which Mr. Webb 

 was editor, although his name is not attached to it except as a con- 

 tributor. About this time Mr. Webb was an active member of the 

 Botanical Exchange Club; he shortly afterwards left Liverpool, 

 and resided for some time on the Continent. On his return to 

 England, he spent a summer in field-work in Cheshire and Kent, 

 moving from place to place, and making catalogues and careful 

 notes of the plants of each district. For some years before his 

 sudden death he filled the post of Curator to the Edinburgh Botanic 

 Garden. Although so thoroughly and critically acquainted with 

 British plants, and possessing a singularly accurate knowledge of 

 continental forms, Mr. Webb published very little: his longest con- 

 tribution to the pages of this Journal was a paper ' On Utriatlaria 

 neglocta; and on U. Bremii as a British plant' (xiv. 142-147), pub- 

 lished in 1876, which sufficiently shows the thoroughness of his 

 work. Some estimate of the value of his careful work m con- 

 nection with the Edinburgh Herbarium may be formed from the 

 « Notes upon some plants in the British Herbarium at the Royal 

 Botanic Garden, Edinburgh,' which he published rn the ' Trans- 

 actions of the Botanical Society ' of Edinburgh in 1867 (vol. xm. 

 pp 88-114). His assistance is acknowledged by Mr. Watson in 

 'Topographical Botany.' Shortly before his death he had in pre- 

 paration for this Journal a series of notes upon British plants, but 

 it is to be feared that these will not now be available. We can 

 but re-ret that so little of the knowledge which Mr. Webb pos- 

 sessed was rendered available for subsequent workers in the same 

 field He was about forty years of age at the time of his death. 



Wk learn from < Coulter's Botanical Gazette' (Oct 1880) that 

 - the Corporation of Brown University [Rhode Island] has esta- 

 blished a botanical professorship, in compliance with the wish of 

 the late Stephen F. Olney, who left 25,000 dollars for this pur- 

 pose Mr. Olney's Herbarium has been deposited m the 

 library building, and will be hereafter known as • the Herbarium 



Olney anum.' " . • - 



Mrs S C. Lewis announces the publication, under the title of 



« Familiar Indian Flowers,' of "thirty coloured plates of some of 



the more familiar flowers found in our Indian gardens, with 



descriptive letterpress 

 We 



it 



>» 



been able to include in this year's Journal the Report of the Kew 

 Herbarium for 1879, the publication of which we announced last 

 month We hope to give the Report in an early number. 



