ALFRED FRYER 



107 



quite exceptional during his whole life, in proof of which we may 

 mention the distances that he covered while exploring on foot the 

 greater part of the Cambridgeshire Fens, and the fact that after 

 taking up his residence in his freehold house at Chatteris he 

 cultivated the large garden attached to it, and managed long 

 ranges of glass for fruit-growing almost entirely with his own 

 hands. 



At first he seems to have been chiefly attracted by ornithology, 

 entomology, and conchology, as there are manuscript lists in his 

 writing of the local birds, butterflies, and fossils ; while he 

 continued to take a special interest in the first of these subjects 

 till the day of his death. It is not clear at what period he turned 

 his attention to botany, but from the absence of any reference to 

 him in Babington's Flora of Camhridgeshire we may conclude it 

 was after 1860 — the date of the publication of that work. His 

 first contribution to this Journal was a short note on Garex 

 distans in Huntingdonshire (Journ. Bot. 1883, 246), which is 

 interesting as showing that he was then in correspondence with 

 Babington and Messrs. J. G. Baker and Arthur Bennett. In the 

 Memorials of the first-named are several letters to Fryer, the 

 earliest, written in 1876, in which Babington acknowledges a 

 list of plants for District vii. of the Flora of Camhridgeshire ; 

 an appreciation of Babington by Fryer, who met him on the 

 occasion of his rare visits to the Cambridge Herbarium, occurs 

 on p. xlviii. of the same work. In 1883 Fryer was contem- 

 plating a Flora of Huntingdonshire and his name occurs as a 

 correspondent of H. C. Watson for that county and for Cam- 

 bridgeshire in the second edition of Topographical Botany (1883, 

 p. 575) ; his interesting published notes, until his attention 

 became absorbed in Fotamogeton, mainly related to these counties, 

 and showed an intimate knowledge both of the plants and their 

 habitats. 



At the time of the publication of the note above referred to 

 Fryer was already in correspondence not only with the botanists 

 already mentioned but with others — notably the Messrs. Groves, 

 with whom he contracted a warm friendship and who accompanied 

 him on various expeditions in the Fens. His communication to 

 this Journal was the beginning of an intimate correspondence 

 with its Editor, which continued with warmth though not with- 

 out interruptions until within a few weeks of his death. A httle 

 later he enlarged his circle of friends to include Mr. G. C. Druce, 

 of Oxford, the discoverer of his Potamogeton Drucei, while Dr. 

 Moss, of the Cambridge Botany School, and Mr. Hunnybun, of 

 Huntingdon, were subsequently added to the list. A. H. Evans 

 first knew Fryer about 1880, and did much work with him in the 

 field. 



The first of Fryer's long and valuable series of communications 

 on the genus with which his name is chiefly associated appeared 

 in this Journal for 1886 (p. 306) ; his growth of the plants for the 

 purpose of study began (as we learn from the note) at least two 

 years before this. At that period (1884) he was already sending 



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