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enthusiasm for the department of botany, which he had 

 chosen as his speciality. He never tired of pushing the 

 claims to notice of his favourite plants and, although there 

 were many other departments of science and art in which 

 he was interested and profoundly versed, he was always 

 best known as " Druery, the Fern man." He wrote volumin- 

 ously on many subjects both in prose and verse, but always 

 most happily and spontaneously on this, his favourite 

 subject. He was a brilliant conversationalist, with an 

 unfailing fund of wit and humour. His jokes and puns 

 were incessant and, from their very abundance, were 

 occasionally atrocious but always ingenious and frequently 

 brilliant. Many of his happy and witty sayings will long 

 be remembered by his friends. His best claim to enduring 

 fame rests upon his discovery of the curious phenomenon 

 of apospory in Ferns. For this he had an exceptional 

 opportunity in being placed in possession, by the late Col. 

 A. M. Jones, of material from one of the ferns in which it 

 is most easily manifested, viz. Athyrium f.f. Clarissima. 

 Mr. G. B. Wollaston had indeed preceded him in the 

 actual observation of apospory (in a different fern), but had 

 failed to follow up and note the significance of the discovery. 

 Mr. Druery's observations were made quite independently, 

 and the result was immediately made the subject of scien- 

 tific scrutiny and record, and consequently the discovery 

 will always be deservedly associated with his name. Like 

 almost every other Fern fancier, Mr. Druery was ambitious 

 as a hunter of wild varieties. He devoted most of his 

 holidays to this quest, and was successful in making many 

 interesting finds. His opportunities, however, as a town 

 dweller, were much fewer than those of a countryman and 

 especially of a resident in a ferny district, and his successes 

 as a hunter were consequently not to be compared with 

 those of Padley, Moly, Wills, Barnes, Whitwell, etc. His 

 best finds were probably his Blechnum sp % continuum (which 



