THE LATE DR. BOSWELL. 88 



of London and removed to town. He lived first at Provost Boad, 

 and afterwards in Adelaide Road, Haver stock Hill. 



In 1852 and 1853 he explored carefully the neighbourhood of 

 London, and saw growing a large number of south-country plants 

 he had never met with before. Two papers on his London explora- 

 tions will be found in the 4th volume of the 'Phytologist.' In 

 1854 Mr. Syme was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and 

 undertook the Botanical Lectureship at the Charing Cross School of 

 Medicine, and afterwards that of Westminster, where he did duty 

 for many years. I became a member of the London Botanical 

 Society in 1852, and I remember that at this period the parcels we 

 received consisted largely of London and Scotch plants gathered by 

 Watson and Syme. The London Society was broken up in 1857, 

 and from that year till 1866 the specimens were distributed from 

 Thirsk. The earlier editions of the * London Catalogue' were 

 mainly or entirely the work of Mr. Watson. Mr. Syme shared 

 with him the editing of the fifth edition, which came out in 1857, 

 and also in the sixth and seventh. The third edition of ' English 

 Botany' began in 1863, and it is upon this his reputation as a 

 botanist mainly rests. 



He had by this time accumulated an extensive herbarium, both 

 of British and European plants, and had seen growing in Scotland 

 and England a large proportion of the species he undertook to 

 describe. The accuracy and carefulness of his descriptions are 

 known far too well to most of the readers of this Journal, from 

 daily practical experience of their usefulness, to need any com- 

 mendation from me here now. I will only venture in this connection 

 to extract a few words from a letter I have received since his death 

 from Mrs. Boswell, who shared from his early years in all his 

 botanical work and interests. " I who acted as his amanuensis, 

 and to whom he dictated the whole of the text of the third edition of 

 4 English Botany,' can testify to the pains he took to make it com- 

 plete, never resting whilst anything remained possible to be done in 

 the way of comparison and research." And it is not alone the 

 fulness and accuracy of the descriptions that make the book so 

 valuable, but the power he shows in grasping the relationship of the 

 types and the acute sense of proportion shown in their arrangement. 

 This was the first time that the British plants were classified on 

 Darwinian lines, and I never cease, when I use the book, to admire 

 the skill which is shown in dividing out the types into species, sub- 

 species, and varieties, a task that was done so thoroughly well that 

 when Sir J. D. Hooker, with all his wide experience, went over the 

 same ground shortly after, in his ■ Student's Flora,' he found 

 extremely little to change. 



The eleven volumes of ■ English Botany' came out between 1868 

 and 1872. The first volume was just finished in time to be reviewed 

 by Br. Seemann in the first monthly issue of this Journal. In 1868 

 te left London for his ancestral home of Balmuto, and in 1875, on 

 tbe death of his uncle, he became the head of that branch of the 

 Boswell family, and took his mother \s maiden name. In 1875 he 

 received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of 



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