i8i 



THE EARLY BOTANICAL WORK OF THE LATE 

 WILLIAM WILSON. 



JAMES CASH, 

 Matichester. 



(Read at a meeting of the Manchester Crj-ptogamic Society, 21st March, 18S7.) 



In a former paper on Mr. Wilson's early botanical work I mentioned 

 the fact of his having corresponded with the Messrs. Sowerby, who 

 were engaged in the year 1830, and subsequently, in the pubHcation 

 of the Supplement to English Botany. Mr. Wilson illustrated and 

 described various plants, then new to Britain, for that work. He 

 furnished the specimens, for illustration, of Woodsia ilvensis from 

 Twl-ddu — ' the Botanical Garden of Snowdon ' — and also those of 

 Hymenophylluni wiisoni, accompanying the latter with some descrip- 

 tive comments. Appended to the description appears the following 

 note by Mr. Wilson : — 



' So very different in aspect is this truly distinct species from the 

 far more elegant H. tiDibridgense that no botanist who has had 

 the good fortune to see them luxuriantly growing in company in the 

 rocky woods that border the wild and sequestered upper lake of 

 Killarney would hesitate to pronounce them two species. It was 

 there that in the summer of 1829 I became first acquainted with the 

 true Hyme?iophyllwn hinbridgense, and had at once the gratification 

 of clearing up my doubts concerning the spurious kind, with which 

 as the common Hynmwphyllum of North Wales, Cumberland, and 

 Perthshire, I had long been imperfectly familiar, and also of un- 

 expectedly adding another fern to the British Flora.' 



A writer in the Oldham Chrotiide of January nth, 1879 

 (' Royton : its self-taught men ') claims for John Mellor the credit 

 of first detecting the difference between the two British species of 

 Hymenophylluvi. He says: 'Previous to his (Mellor's) acquamtance 

 with Mr. Wilson the British " Hymenophylluni " consisted of one 



species — tunbridgense Mellor having found it growing in a 



cave at Seal Bark, Greenfield, pointed out to Mr. Wilson the absence 

 of wings of the rachis, the different habit, etc., of some portion of 

 the Greenfield species. Wilson and Mellor subsequently visited 

 Greenfield together, and the former being convinced of a sufficient 

 specific distinction, conveyed the information to Hooker, who gave 

 it the name of Wilsoni.'' It is unfortunate that the date of this 

 visit to Greenfield is not given. I will only observe, with reference 

 to the matter, that it is extremely improbable that Mr. Wilson visited 

 Greenfield before his tour in Ireland in 1829, and Mr. Wilson himself 



June 1887. 



