Cash : The late Mr. William Wilson. 



209 



It was in the autumn of 1834 that Mr. Wilson first collected FJiy^- 

 comitrium spJioericum in that which is still the only known station for 

 it in Britain. His botanical journal in the latter half of that year 

 was, owing to private circumstances, not kept with the care he had 

 previously bestowed upon it, and the only entry I can find 

 bearing upon the bryology of Mere is the following, which is without 

 specific date : — " Made discoveries of several new mosses at Mere, in 

 Cheshire, Irlam, &c." 



The most notable of these discoveries was that of the rare PJiysco- 

 mitrium ; but Mr. Wilson also found some rare Phasca, including 

 FJiascum stenopJiyllum {Phascum sessile, var. /S Bry. Brit.), and the rare 

 ArcMdium phascoides. Fruit of Riccia fluitans, for the first time in 

 Britain, was on this occasion discovered. The Irlam discovery was 

 fertile Dicranella Schreheri. Mr. Wilson communicated these facts to 

 his friend Sir Wm. Hooker, who wrote as follows : — 



" Glasgow, November 28th, 1834. 



Dear Sir, — I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 31st of 

 October, and would not have suffered a month to have elapsed without 

 answering it had I been master of my own time. I have wished 

 particularly to congratulate you on your most extraordinary and 

 interesting recent cryptogamic discoveries. To say nothing of Gyimm- 

 tomum [Physcomitrium'] sphcericum and other good mosses, I do think 

 your having found the fruit of Riccia fluitans a circumstance on which 

 you deserve to be congratulated by all lovers of botany. Hundreds have 

 searched for it, but no one ever saw it before in that state. I wish 

 you would make a drawing of it on a small size such as the space 

 included within this pencil lioe [about 5in. by S^in.], and write a 

 description, and let me publish it— rif I am mad enough to go on with 

 the ' Botanical Journal.' I am a very great loser by the four numbers 

 I have already published ; yet I am very desirous to continue it, for it 

 is a means of giving much botanical information to the public which 

 would otherwise be entirely lost. I should not be so much a loser if 

 the publisher could afford to pay me what I expend upon it, and as he 

 is bound to do. But as the sale has not covered the expenses of adver- 

 tising, and as the man is poor, I have not the heart to ask him for the 

 money. Your Bicranum Schreberianum looks like what Greville and I 

 found on Ben-y-Gloe some years ago, and which I suppose is what 

 Bridel makes var. /3. Grevilleanum. I cannot lay my hands on my own 

 specimens now, and my second edition of ' Muscologia Britannica,' 

 where I have figured it, is gone to the binding. But in some con- 

 tinental specimens given in Mougeot andNestler I find the beak of the 



