THOMAS MEEHAN 89 
Rubus as being ‘to my knowledge, seven years old.” Meehan was 
one of the early students in this country of this perplexing genus ; 
he tells us in the interesting reminiscences which he contributed to 
the Journal of the Kew Guild for 1894 (pp. 88-48) that, ‘‘as a 
reward for the paper on Rubus, [he] was elected, before [he] was 
nineteen years old, a member of the Royal Wernerian Socie y.”” 
This paper does not seem to have been published, but he continued 
to study the genus after his arrival at Kew (in 1846), and at the 
end of 1847 wrote ‘‘A List of Rubi observed near London, with 
Observations” (Phyt. iii. 9). The observations read curiously 
we certainly nowadays have no cause to complain of any ‘“‘indis- 
position to study this genus’ :— 
‘“ It j 
half-a-century and more afterwards, and may be worth reproducing : 
aptability to approach some other Se form when growing in 
for deciding R. vestitus of the ‘Rubi Germanici,’ and R, villicaulis 
of Babington’s Manual, as mere varieties of R. leucostachys (Sm.). 
I find this ‘ var.’ argenteus growing in a wet ditch by the side of the 
Thames at Mortlake, and exactly agreeing with a specimen gathere 
