i6o 



IN MEMORIAM W. W. NEWBOULD. 



to a notice of the reported Huichinsia alpina on Ingleborough, in 

 the first volume of Seemann's Journal of Botany, and two or three 

 other bare records in that journal ; but he so constantly — ever 

 working con amore — gave assistance of the most thorough and 

 pains-taking kind to flora compilers, content with the most meagre 

 acknowledgment, and often disclaiming even so much of thanks, 

 that it would be difficult to over-estimate his share in the advancement 

 of British Botany during the last thirty-five years. His contemporaries, 

 Prof. C. C. Babington, of Cambridge, and the late H. C. Watson, 

 have testified to this ; the former, in his Preface to the ' Flora of 

 Cambridgeshire,' wrote (in i860): 'Mr. Newbould has given me the 

 greatest possible assistance . . . indeed, without his help I could 

 not have ventured to offer this book to botanists. The appearance 

 of his initials upon nearly every page will shew the great extent and 

 value of his contributions.' Mr. Watson, in ' Topographical Botany,' 

 page 530 (1874), wrote: 'In various modes I have been assisted by 

 Mr. Newbould while writing this and former works. Indeed that 

 gentleman's ever-readiness to take trouble on behalf of other botanists 

 is too well known to need eulogy from my pen ; though it may be 

 allowable here to record an expression of my own grateful sense of 

 his indefatigable and disinterested zeal in the promotion of botanical 

 knowledge.' At the foot of the Preface to the second edition of 

 'Topographical Botany' (issued in 1883, after Mr. Watson's death), 

 Mr. Newbould's name appears together with that of Mr. J. G. Baker, 

 as a co-editor of the work ; although we believe, with his usual 

 modesty, he disclaimed the honour afterwards. 



A native of the Sheffield neighbourhood, the botany of his native 

 county, and especially of the West Riding, was a subject in which he 

 ever took the keenest interest. Removed early from Sheffield, he 

 had not the opportunity of observing and collecting within its limits 

 so much as he would have done ; but he added Epipactis media 

 {violaced) and one or two other species to its flora ; and from the 

 moment that a complete historical Flora of the Riding was projected 

 (in 1876) we have reason to know that by researches into old or 

 scarce books at the British Museum, by examination of little-accessible 

 herbaria, and in many other ways, he rendered every assistance in his 

 power to Mr. F. Arnold Lees. The issue has an unusually sad side 

 in connection with that very Flora. A portion of its completed 

 sheets were the last thing his eyes consciously rested upon ! He had 

 keenly desired its completion, so many of his own conclusions were 

 embodied in its pages, and he had more than once chafed somewhat 

 at the delayed performance of a work in which he was, in one sense, a 

 collaborateur. 



5 MAY " S&6 Naturalist, 



