329 
WILLIAM MITTEN. 
(WITH PORTRAIT.) 
Witt1am Mirren, the accomplished bryologist, who passed 
away on Friday, July 27th, in his eighty-seventh year, was born at 
Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, on Nov 80th, 1819. By profession he was 
a pharmaceutical chemist, and early in life he joined to this the 
study of botany, devoting most of his spare time to it; but for 
many years, as he wrote to Sir William Hooker, Sundays were the 
only days he could go into the fields. At first he studied nearly all 
classes of British plants, and his investigations were always of a 
critical character. Jincouraged by Borrer and Sir William Hooker, 
he paid special attention to mosses and liverworts pain and 
e soon became on a se 
the Phytologist, saan ee 2, ym 1842, the naruncation 
near Hrith, of Brywm cies in frui was in May, ; 
too, that he discovered Carea montana, near a og a though 
the fact was not put on record till 1845. This w. e first record 
for the British Islands, and Edward Jenner’s rota - Heathfield, 
hire. 
rom his own writings we learn that Mitten made the acquaint- 
ance of his neighbour, William Borrer, early in his career, and 
Gerace, Dec. 8th, 1846, and relates to the parasitism of 
Thesitum and Cuscuta, in connection with his paper on the former, 
whibh ‘appoarea in Hooker’s London Journal of Botany in 1847, and 
was repeated in the Phytologist and the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 
This article furnishes evidence that Mitten was a keen observer, and 
its reproduction in the Annales shows that it was of more than 
ordinary interest. It was followed by many records of discoveries, 
pla 
gatherers these plants will be considered mere ‘ splits’; but, pci 
mending them to the examination as field-botanists, I will be n- 
tent to say with Nees ab Esenbeck: ‘ Malo enim peccare in ae 
criminandis quam in Safchaan a) rerum nature cognitionibus.’ ”’ 
re his Borrer—* without the very 
valuable assistance of his vecuanae gee library I could not 
have Sar positive that my plants were precisely those of foreign 
author 
Teheai or Botany.—Vorn, 44. [Ocroper, 1906.] 2.8 
