308 CATALOGUE OP ME. N. J. wrNCH's IICHENS. 



of Northumberland and Durham.''^ Proposals to institute this 

 Society were made in the midsummer of 1829, but it was not 

 organized until the following year; and Mr. "Winch, in conjunc- 

 tion with Mr. W. Hutton, are represented as its first Secretaries. 

 Mr. "Winch's connection with the Society, we are sorry to say, 

 was not of long duration ; the last notice of his presence at its 

 meetings being in IS'ovember, 1832. The cause of his separation 

 we cannot here discuss ; but suffice it to say that it resulted in 

 the whole of his large and valuable collection being sent to the 

 Linngean Society, and those now in the possession of the Barras 

 Bridge Museum, are only such as have been returned by the 

 authorities of the Linnsean Society, after they had made their 

 selection. 



Merit, in a "favourite pursuit," had little claim in the mind 

 of Mr. "Winch. If the pursuit was agreeable and loved, then 

 the labour, patience, and perseverance it required were "trivial 

 indeed." That was the spirit in which he regarded and wrote 

 about his own work, and which undoubtedly accounts for the 

 large amount of unrecompensed service which he rendered to 

 botanical science. He was, what every scientist should be, a 

 student of Nature from the love of l^ature ; he neither changed 

 nor flagged in his delightful pursuit so long as his powers re- 

 mained. His Flora of NortJmmlerland and Durham, published 

 in the Transactions of this Society, Yol. II-, Part 1, 1832, was 

 the result of thirty years attention to our local botany. The 

 knowledge of his habits and his methods of study during those 

 years would have been of importance and value, and the inci- 

 dents of his journeys must have been numerous and interesting. 

 But we know of no record of them, and now the means of ascer- 

 taining them are gone. Our personal remarks are necessarily 

 limited, but they are made with the feeling that Mr. "Winch 

 was worthy of a better record in the Transactions of this Society. 



"We are told that he was a man of small stature ; and he was 

 evidently of a sanguine temperament, indefatigable in his in- 

 dustry, and of indomitable will. He died in ]S"ewcastle, and 

 the memory of his death is only marred by the severity of his 

 bodily sufferings. 



