264 In Memoriam — William Hodgson, A.L.S. 



' grand foray ' he had made, or of some 'famous medley' of 

 plants he had obtained. At times he would treat his botanical 

 correspondents to various interesting- odds and ends, perhaps to 

 a quotation from, as he put it, 'my old friend Xenophon,' or, 

 referring- to some plant growing upon Helvellyn, to the following, 

 ' I wonder if you ever heard the dalesmen's distich — 

 Skiddaw, Helvellyn, aud Catsticam 

 Are three biggest hills that ivver man clam,' 



or, as he was fond of doing, to some information regarding the 

 local names given to plants by children or by the dalesmen, for 

 instance, writing of Adoxa moschatellina he would add, ' called 

 by the young-sters of Carlisle the Town Hall Clock.' William 

 Hodgson was a true Cumbrian of the Cumbrians, and he 

 delighted to relate, with a liberal use of the Cumberland dialect, 

 some one or other of his many angling- experiences or botanical 

 hunts. He bestowed particular attention upon the strange 

 plants which appeared from time to time upon the ballast and 

 rubbish cast out from ships around the docks at Silloth, Mary- 

 port, Workington, and elsewhere, and many a batch of botanical 

 puzzles he sent to Kew for identification. It is interesting- to 

 note the amount of genuine pleasure that the sight of even the 

 commonest plants afforded him ; of the Sea Holly he wrote, 

 ' How indescribably splendid is the Sea Holly just now on the 

 west slope of Skinburness Grune, 1 and of Menyanthes trifoliata 

 he wrote, ' It is the handsomest flower I have ever seen, native 

 or foreign.' 



William Hodgson was Botanical Recorder at one time to the 

 Cumberland and Westmorland Association for the Advancement 

 of Literature and Science. In his Record for 1887-8 he made 

 the following commendable observation : — A few new stations 

 for ferns of comparative rarity have been kindly communicated 

 to me, but, in view of the wholesale destruction of these 

 interesting plants, I refrain from making- thern public' He was 

 elected an Associate of the Linnean Society of London in 1884. 

 The following- interesting letter is from Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., 

 of the Royal Herbarium at Kew, to the writer : — 



' It was when staying at Penrith in 1884 to work at my 

 ■ Flora of the English Lake District ' that I first made Mr. 

 Hodgson's personal acquaintance through Mrs. Frank King. 

 I went over to Watermillock to visit him, and we had a walk 

 together along the shore of Ulleswater. Since then we have 

 kept up a correspondence, and he has sent me every year 

 specimens of the more interesting and difficult plants he 



Naturalist, 



