A Yorkshire Botanist. 



47 



At home, Spruce accomplished much, not the least interest- 

 ing being the discovery and identification of a new plant to the 

 British Flora, Car ex paradoxa. Amongst his many other works 

 we notice one ' On Cephalozia : its sub-genera and its alhed 

 genera' (1882), this being the fore-runner of the large work 

 just referred to. It contained 100 pages, and was printed in 

 Malton. This is really a key to his arrangement of the 

 Hepaticae which is now generally followed. 



The following extract, given by Dr. Wallace from one of 

 Spruce's letters, is, like many others, v/orth quoting in these 

 columns : — 



' On our owTi moors I have far oftener seen Odontoschisma Sphagni 

 growing on Leucobryum glaucum than on Sphagna. Now that the steam- 

 plough is fast obhterating the small remnant of moors in the \^ale of 

 York, it is worth while recording something about the Leucobryum, 

 as seen on Strensall Moor, five to six miles north of York. There it forms 

 immense rounded hassocks, some of which in my youth were as much as 

 three feet high ; and although the ground whereon they grew- is now drained 

 and ploughed out, I am told that on another part of the moor there are 

 still left a few hassocks about two feet high. When the late Mr. Wilson 

 first saw them, thirty years ago, he took them at a distance for sheep ; 

 as he approached them he changed his mind for haycocks ; but when he 

 actually came up and saw what they were he was astonished, and declared 

 he had never seen such gigantic moss-tufts elsewhere. During seven con- 

 secutive years that I saw them frequentl}' , I could observe no sensible 

 increase in height. The very slight annual outgiowth of the marginal 

 branches is comparable to the outermost twigs of an old tree, and is almost 

 or quite counterbalanced by the soft, imperfectly elastic mass incessantly 

 decaying and settling down at the base ; so that these tufts of Leucobryum 

 may well be almost as secular as our Oaks or Elms ; and some of them 

 might even be coming into existence, if not so far back as when the warders 

 of Bootham Bar and Monk Bar (the northern entrances to York) used to 

 hear the wolves howling beneath their feet on the bleak winter nights, at 

 least while the ' last wolf ' was still prowling in the Forest of Galtres.' 



In 1869 he wrote a letter in which he stated ' One day last 

 week a dentist relieved me of four teeth, and I now belong to the 

 genus Gymnostomum ; but by the time you come over I hope 

 to have developed a complete double peristome.' 



As we know more of the life Spruce led, the more do we 

 appreciate his worth. He was never wealthy, often very poor ; 

 and for a great part of his life was a martyr to an internal 

 disease, which necessitated his reclining or a couch. During 

 the last thirty years of his life, he lived some time at Welburn, 

 and later in a small cottage at Coneysthorpe, near Malton ; his 

 ' world ' being a sitting room, twelve feet square, and a bed- 

 room of equally limited proportions. In this small room he was 

 visited by many of the leading scientific men of his day, and from 

 it he corresponded with the botanists of all parts of the globe. 



1909 February i. 



