BIOGRAPHY 
xxiii 
he had a serious attack of congestion of the brain ; and in 1848 
he had another illness from gall-stones, causing, he declared, 
"the most excruciating pain it is possible to conceive," and 
which left him very weak for a long time. These serious 
illnesses, together with great liability to severe colds and con- 
stantly recurring winter cough, indicate the great delicacy of his 
organisation, and render more remarkable the amount of labour 
and privation, he afterwards endured. 
The breaking up of the York Collegiate School was the 
turning-point in Spruce's life, resulting in his becoming a botanist 
and botanical explorer of the first rank. We must therefore go 
back a few years to relate what is known of his early life as a 
student of plants. 
Mr. G. Stabler, who was also a native of Ganthorpe, tells us 
that, when quite a child. Spruce " showed much aptitude for 
learning, and at an early age developed a great love of nature. 
Amongst his favourite amusements was the making lists of plants, 
and he had also a great liking for astronomy." In 1834, when 
sixteen years old, he had drawn up a neatly written list of all 
the plants he had found around Ganthorpe. It is arranged 
alphabetically and contains 403 species, the gathering and naming 
of which must certainly have occupied some years. Three years 
later he had drawn up a " List of the Flora of the Malton 
District," the MSS. of which is in the possession of his executor, 
Mr. Slater, and this contains 485 species of flowering plants. 
Several of Spruce's localities for the rarer plants are given in 
Baines's Flora of Yorkshire^ published in 1840. 
By this time it is evident that he had not merely collected 
plants but had studied them carefully, as shown by the fact that 
in 1 84 1 he discovered, and identified as a new British plant, the 
very rare sedge Carex paradoxa. He had also now begun the 
study of mosses, since in the same year he found a moss new to 
Britain, Leskea pulvinata, previously known only from Lapland. 
Among his early friends or correspondents were Ibbotson, Baines 
of York, and Slater of Malton, while he himself tells us (in a 
letter to Mr. Borrer) that Sam Gibson was his first adviser in the 
study of mosses. This Gibson was a whitesmith or " tinman " 
at Hebden Bridge, about six miles west of Halifax^ and was one 
of a considerable number of North-country working-men botanists 
of the early nineteenth century. Spruce probably visited him 
during his first residence near York, when he would have the 
necessary leisure during his vacations, since Gibson speaks of 
him as his "friend" in 1841, and Spruce told Mr. Slater that he 
had seen Gibson in his workshop with Hooker's British Flora on 
