i88 



J. CASH : EARLY BOTANICAL WORK OF WM. WILSON. 



One of the subjects mentioned by Mr. Bowman in his 

 letter of the 19th June was the supposed identity of a fern from 

 Dinas Bran with Cystea (or Cystopteris) dentata. ^Ir. Wilson tried 

 to settle this point, and he records in his journal, under date 

 March 31st, 1831, that he examined attentively all the specimens 

 vs'hich had been sent him of Cystopteris dentata, C. fragilis, 

 and C. alpina^ but that he was ' engaged half the day to little 

 purpose.' 



Upon his return from Derbyshire in the spring of that year, Mr. 

 Wilson wrote ]\Ir. Bowman, giving an account of his journey, and 

 also the results of his observations on the lid of Schistostega; and in 

 a subsequent letter (19th May), having established the identity of 

 the ' shining moss ' with Schistostega, he made known that fact also 

 to his esteemed correspondent. 



I now propose to give a few excerpts from Mr. Bowman's letters 

 to Mr. Wilson between March 1831 and October 1833, so far as 

 they are of interest especially in relation to matters previously 

 referred to. 



Mr. Bowman wrote, 26th ^larch, 1831 — 



.... I first began to dabble in botany in 1 807. For the first ten years I 

 knew only a few common plants, and I did not preserve a single specimen ; and for 

 twenty years it was not my fortune to come into personal contact with any one 

 who could be called a botanist, or to whom I could apply for a solution of my 

 difficulties or the correction of my errors. . . . The mistletoe certainly grows in 

 W}Tinstay Park (and also between us and Chester, near the Dee, as I am led to 

 believe), but principally on the lime and crab. I have never observed it myself 

 on the oak, though my friend Pickering, Sir Watkin Wynn's agent — an intelligent 

 man, though no botanist — has told me that he has seen it there. I will require 

 him to point it out, and at all events wall preserve you male and female specimens 

 and seeds in the winter. My friend Dovaston has sown it on various trees in his 

 garden, but says it will not succeed on the resinous or fir tribe. I have heard 

 Dovaston remark that after the radicle has shot into the bark of the stock it 

 makes no progress outwardly for a season or two, till it has fully established 

 itself. May not this be the case with those you consider as dead ? 



This allusion to the mistletoe has reference to a passage in a 

 letter of Mr. Wilson, to the effect that he had been making experi- 

 ments in the planting of mistletoe seeds, but that these seeds had 

 been ' two years planted, and were now probably dead and gone.' 

 It may be of interest in this connection to state that in the summer 

 of 1884 I had the gratification of walking through the garden of 

 Bruch Cottage, ^Ir. Wilson's residence for so many years, near War- 

 rington, and observed the mistletoe growing in three separate places — 

 upon the common apple, upon the white beam-tree {Pyriis aria), 

 and upon the common hawthorn [Cratcegiis oxyacantha) — all, no 

 doubt, the result of Mr. Wilson's experiments at various times upon 

 the germination of the seeds. The time when the seeds were sown 

 is uncertain — hardly, I should think, so far ago back as the year 



Naturalist, 



