820 OBITUARY. 



Mr. Watkins was too modest to bring the results of his work 

 willingly before the public. He contributed some notes on the 

 flowering of plants at Ross to the Phytologist for June, 1861 (v. 188) ; 

 and published some notes on the flora of the Frome and Bromyard 

 districts of Herefordshire in the Transactions of the Woolhope Field 

 Club for 1868 (pp. 164-7). In 1881 he was induced to put on 

 record a summary of his work on the Doward Hills, in an able 

 paper under the title of a " Plorula of the Dowards," published by 

 the Woolhope Field Naturalists' Society, of which he was elected 

 an honorary member in 1886. The Flora of Herefordshire was 

 published for the same Society in 1889; and the frequency with 

 which Mr. Watkins's name occurs as an authority for records in 

 that work attests his industry. About 1890 his health began to 

 fail, and he was obliged to forego entirely both his field work and 



his microscope. 



A man of very retiring and modest disposition and abstemious 

 habits, Mr. Watkins was not one to be widely known ; but he was 

 greatly valued by the few who knew him well. An extensive 

 reader, he was also an acute observer, not only of plants, but also 

 of men. During nearly fifty years he was employed as relieving 

 officer, and for a portion of that time as school attendance officer, 

 in the neighbourhood of Ross. He performed these onerous and 

 too often thankless duties faithfully and well, and has become in 

 his own neighbourhood a pattern of what such officers ought to be. 

 He gained, during their discharge, a knowledge of the poor, their 

 sayings and their ways, possessed by very few. He was a faithful 

 and generous friend, never thinking any trouble too much which 

 could help another in his work. Augustin Ley. 



We in Australian science have sustained a sad loss through the 

 sudden death of Mr. Eobekt Fitzgerald, F.L.S., which took place 

 on August 18th, at his residence, Hunter's Hill, Sydney, in his 

 sixty-second year. I was not even aware of his illness. I found 

 him through many years a sterling friend, and his orchidographic 

 researches, supported by a rare ability in plant -drawing, are beyond 

 all praise. The greater number of Australian Orchids are done by 

 him for his superb work, but it is to be lamented that he did not 

 live to complete it. His botanic career commenced publicly in 

 1869, when he had the enviable opportunity, together with Mr. 

 Charles Moore, to visit Lord Howe's Island, and when for the first 

 time the almost entirely endemic vegetable treasures of that isolated 

 spot between New Zealand and Norfolk Island became revealed. 

 He then ascended there the very dangerously steep Mt. Lidgbird, 

 which rises to 3000 feet, and it was on its declivity that the 40 ft. 

 high Dracophyllum Fitzgeraldi vr&s discovered; several Orchids, an 

 Hileioctis and several other plants bear his name. To the study 

 of Orchids he was specially led by Darwin's work, and his observa- 

 tions on the fertilisation and hybridisation of numerous Australian 

 species are highly important. He went purposely to West Australia 

 on a lengthened tour, to studv the larselv unions Oroh\a flora, there 



in 



South 



Feed 



