THOMAS RICHARD ARCHER BRIGGS. 101 
folk made him always both an interested and a helpful member of 
the party. In fact, he was so essentially unselfish, and so truly 
eager to be helpful to all with whom from any cause he came into 
close contact, that the social instinct was, I should say, always 
strong in him, sores: engrossing his personal studies or employ- 
ments might seem 
Towards the al of 1877 I spent a night at his house in 
j orssteig and he then showed me a considerable part of his 
Flora already in MS. But he never allowed himself to be hurried 
in his work, and he was especially anxious to do all he could with 
the Rose and Rubi of the district before he went to press. Rosa 
had attracted him greatly, and so he roe especially enjoyed and 
valued the frequent sapere eae of . G. Baker during a 
month that he had spent at Plymouth ; wet now, after a lengthened 
correspondence with him and with the late M. Déséglise, he had to 
a great degree mastered this difficult genus, - far as it is repre- 
sented in 8. Devon and E. Cornwall. Even so far hook as 1869, 
when Mr. Baker read his Monograph on the pain to the Linnean 
Society, we find him saying, ‘‘ For a liberal supply of specimens I 
am indebted to Mr. T. R. Archer Briggs’; and he specially 
mentions specimens from him under R. tomentosa, R. micrantha var. 
Briggsii, several canina forms, and R. bibracteata. As one of the 
latest fruits of Briggs’ close study of this genus we find him reading 
tish 
After this his interest in the genus seemed rather to flag, and two 
insi ti his entire 
or years 
collection of rose specimens, British and 
His work on Rubi was necessarily extatited over a much ae 
period. He had had the great Swedish batologist, 
botanising with him in the Plymouth neighbourhood, and with 
him, as well as with Prof. Babington and Dr. Focke, he had been in 
frequent correspondence for many years before I knew him. And 
he had already contributed some interesting papers on the genus to 
this Journal, as e.g., ‘‘ Stations of and Notes respecting some 
Plymouth Rubi” in 1869, and on R. ramosus Blox., R. adscitus 
Genev., and R. mutabilis Genev. in 1871; while in the 1869 vol. 
the Rev. A. Bloxam had described and figured under the name &, 
Briggsii Blox. a new form which Briggs had found near Plymouth. 
silvaticus, and longithyrsiger,—occurred here and there in the Teign 
Valley also, tho ough Dartmoor and 4 wide tract of country intervened. 
e keenness Phas his interest in this genus continued and even 
increased o the last; so that Rubi always had the place of 
honour in ts Diadidad, and were the chief subject of our corre- 
spondence 
In March, 1878, he left the house in which his father had died the 
previous year, and took up his residence with his brother, who had 
