xxviii Ohituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



Iridaeearum.' In 1893 he contributed to the ' Annals of Botany ' a synopsis 

 of the Musem. So highly were these various contributions valued, that 

 Baker was begged to collate and systematise many of his articles in the 

 ' Gardeners' Chronicle ' and the ' Journal of Botany/ and re-issue the informa- 

 tion in a series of valuable handbooks. One of these, dealing with the 

 Amaryllidece as a whole, appeared in 1885 ; another, dealing with the 

 Bromeliacece, was published in 1889 ; a third, dealing with the Iridece, was 

 issued in 1892. 



But Baker did not confine his attention exclusively to monocotyledons and 

 vascular cryptogams. He was the author of numerous similar papers dealing 

 with dicotyledonous plants. One of the most important of these, owing to 

 its bearing on economic problems, was a monograph of the tuber-bearing 

 species of Solanum, published by the Linnean Society in 1884. 



Before Baker undertook to describe the ferns of Brazil, he had already 

 displayed his aptitude for floristic, as contrasted with monographic study, in 

 the ' New Flora of Northumberland and Durham,' prepared in collaboration 

 with G. E. Tate, and published in 1866. The appearance in 1870 of the 

 volume relating to ferns immediately led to an invitation to elaborate the 

 Brazilian Compositce. The results occupy two volumes, issued by instalments 

 between 1873 and 1884, in the great work of Von Martins. But Baker had 

 already elaborated one natural family for the ' Flora of Tropical Africa ' in 

 the first volume, issvied in 1868, and another in the second volume, which 

 appeared in 1871. He described the species of twenty-one additional 

 families for the parts of this work published between 1898 and 1906. He 

 also elaborated for the ' Flora of British India ' an account of one natural 

 family, published in 1876 and 1878, and of a second family, published in 

 1890 and 1892. In 1877 appeared his 'Flora of Mauritius and the 

 Seychelles.' In 1885 he published his well-known 'Flora of the English 

 Lake District.' Between 1877 and 1895 he contributed, partly to the 

 ' Journal of Botany,' partly to the Linnean Society, a series of important 

 floristic studies connected with the vegetation of Madagascar, which embody 

 descriptions of over a thousand species previously unknown. He also 

 described the species of five natural families, included in the sixth volume 

 of the 'Flora Capensis,' published during 1896 and 1897. 



Notwithstanding the extent and the excellence of Baker's systematic 

 contributions, his interest was not wholly confined to classification. His 

 earliest note, published in 1849, is concerned with the environment rather 

 than with the characters of the plant to which it refers. In the striking^ 

 paper published by him in 1855, when he had barely attained his majority, 

 Baker attempts to classify British plants " according to their geognostic 

 relations." His work on North Yorkshire, which was published in 1863, is a 

 natural history of the area discussed, of such value that the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union during the period 1888-1906 accorded it the unusual 

 honour of republication in their Transactions in a revised form. Baker took 

 the opportunity afforded him by the preparation of the ' Synopsis Filicum ' 



