ALFRED FRYER 109 



liberality will be gone for ever, and I shall be set down as a fit companion 

 for Daniel Dancer and other eminent misers." 



In another letter he writes : — 



" Many of the specimens must be gummed down to the paper — glue 

 would ruin tliem. To this I add that I must do this myself — no ordinary 

 mounter of museum specimens could do it properly. Pray do not think 

 me too conceited ! in this respect I am not a bit so — I merely knoiu what 



is wanted, no one save a special Pot. man can know Again, 



ordinary botanical paper is quite unfit for mounting Pots, if they are to 

 be studied. Paper such as I by chance hit upon is just suitable. It is 

 firm enough to handle, and yet is sufficiently translucent to admit of the 



venation being closely examined To show all that I had in view 



in making such a long series of the same form, it is necessary that the 

 whole mass should be rearranged and catalogued, numbering each sheet. 

 One set, for instance, would contain a series of forms from lucens to 

 heteropliylliis without a single gap ! This would show the way in which 

 two quite distinct species pass from one to the other without a missing 

 link. Then each of the dozen species and hybrid species into which I 

 have broken up this mass of allied forms wants illustrating by some fifty 

 sheets of each segregate. Less than that number would not give the 

 sluggish human intellect a true conception of a species. I have no idea 

 of how many sheets there will be when, if ever, all is finished, five or six 

 thousand at least — how many more ? " 



Fryer left several separate collections of pond-weeds : one con- 

 sists largely of foreign specimens, one of a series of British forms, 

 but these two, though in separate cabinets and containing many 

 duplicates, should be doubtless considered as forming one united 

 whole. He always impressed upon his friends the necessity of 

 having a long series of specimens to show the range of variation 

 with sufficient clearness, and many apparent duplicates must by no 

 means be so considered. A third collection consists of picked 

 specimens, to show to visitors who could not for want of time 

 examine the full series, while a fourth is of extra specimens, no 

 doubt originally intended for exchange. All the collections are to 

 go to Mr. Charles Bailey for his life ; the bulk is to be sent, after 

 his death, to the Botanical Department of the British Museum, 

 and a set of the duplicates to the Botany School at Cambridge. 



One daughter by his first marriage and six children by his 

 second remain to mourn Fryer's decease ; Miss Kose Fryer, his 

 eldest daughter, contributed beautiful coloured drawings to the 

 third edition of Sepp's Nederlandsche Insekten, published in 1905. 

 A grand-nephew, Claude Fryer, has just completed his course at 

 Cambridge with the highest honours in Natural Science, and is at 

 present working in Ceylon. 



Fryer was a delightful companion in the field, w^here he dis- 

 coursed on the most varied subjects ; and one of the writers of 

 this notice has had many pleasant expeditions in his company 

 during the last few years to the localities where the rarer species 

 of Potamogeton occurred. It is often said that to know is to love, 

 but the words are more true in his case than in many another. 



The robust health which happily characterized Fryer through- 

 out his life remained until a few days before his death, when he 

 quickly succumbed to an attack of influenza followed by heart dis- 



