64 



The Naturalist. 



baggage to be forwarded by canal from Runcorn, he walked to Pad- 

 dington, which place he reached about dusk, after an absence from 

 home of about nine months. 



This narrative would be incomplete if I did not read to you some of 

 the correspondence which arose out. of Mr. Wilson's sojourn in Ireland. 

 On the 23rd December, 1830, Prof. Hooker wrote to Mr. Wilson as 

 follows : — " My dear Sir : You will, I am sure, think that I pester 

 you with letters, but the occasion upon which I now write to you 

 is this : I was yesterday examining your lichens, and among them I 

 found one which interested me exceedingly. You have marked it 84 

 in your MSS. ; and again, it is one of two lichens in your number 

 212 (the barren state.) The genus is Sticta. There is no British 

 Sticta that at aU approaches to it, either in habit or in character. But 

 there is one, a foreign one, a native, too, of the Isle of France 

 [Mauritius,] which I can hardly distinguish from it, at least some of 

 its states — and that is Sticta macropJiylla, which I have figured in the 

 first number of my Botanical Mkcellamj. Do compare your plant with 

 it, if you have the number of the Miscetlany, making allowance for 

 the figure being made from the finest specimen I had, and of that 

 variety ' Apotheciis marginalihis^ whereas I have specimens of Sticta 

 macrophylla as small as your plant, and with the apothecia scattered. 

 In the paper marked 212, the barren plant is the Sticta, the fertile one 

 Parmelia tiliacea. You will see in the former the little pits or hollows 

 [cypTiellm) embedded in the downy lower surface of the frond, 

 which are characteristic of the genus Sticta. Of your other lichens 

 No. 171 is Sticta sylmtica. * * Pray have you much of the above 

 new Sticta, or is there any person in the country who can gather more 

 of it 1 Can you spare a specimen for Sowerby to draw,* and one 

 for Mr. Borrer 1 Either Mr. Borrer or I will describe it for English 

 Botany, unless you will do so. — Yours, &c., W. J. Hooker." 



Absence from home prevented Mr. Wilson answering this letter 

 until the 7th of February. The absorbing question between them 

 was — who, in Ireland, could be depended upon to gather the famous 

 lichen ? Wilson thought of J. T. Mackay, the author of Flora 

 Hibernica, but Mackay was living in Dublin, and might not immedi- 

 ately be visiting the south. Hooker suggested Harvey, who lived at 

 Limerick. This was apparently the first time that Wilson had heard of 

 the young Quaker botanist. "There is," Hooker wrote, " a very 

 zealous Irish botanist (and a Quaker), who is about to publish a work 

 on new cryptogamic plants, but particularly algae. He draws very 



* For English Botany. 



