MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



Eepkinted from the 'Joubnal op Botany' fob September, 1881. 



We have this month to mourn the loss of our veteran 

 English botanical geographer, Hewitt Cottbell Watson, who 

 died at his residence at Thames Ditton, near Kingston, on 

 Wednesday, the 27th of July, in the seventy-eighth year of his 

 age. Shortly before Christmas he had an accident whilst work- 

 ing in his garden ; he stepped backward against a heap of soil 

 and rubbish which he did not notice, and injured his foot and 

 leg, which was lame before. Acute inflammation set in, which 

 resulted in gangrene, and he had been confined to his bedroom 

 ever since Christmas ; and, although until the last fortnight he 

 had been able to dress and lie on the sofa during the day, at 

 times he suffered great pain, and his strength became gradually 

 exhausted. 



He was' bom in the month of May, 1804, at Firbeck, a 

 village on the Yorkshire side of the boundary between that 

 county and Nottinghamshire, not far from Worksop. When he 

 was six years old the family removed to Congleton, in Cheshire. 

 His father was Holland Watson, a country gentleman of anti- 

 quarian tastes and a magistrate for the counties both of Cheehire 

 and Lancashire. On his mother's side he was descended from 

 the Lords Folliott, of Ballyshannon. But, although upon both 

 sides he could trace back his descent for many generations 

 through ancestors of good social position, he was from a very 

 early period of his life an uncompromising democrat, not merely , 

 passively and theoretically, but taking a lively active interest in 

 political affairs. In Mid- Surrey, where he lived for the last 



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