xxiv NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
the bench by his side, and that it was in parts so begrimed and 
blackened as to be almost illegible. 
During his first year at the Collegiate School, however, he 
gave himself to the study of mathematics with so much ardour as 
for a time to neglect botany ; but Mr. Stabler tells us that in 
one of his summer vacations he found, on Slingsby Moor, a few 
miles north of his home, " one of the uncinate Hypna in splendid 
fruit. His love of plants, from which he had been weaned for a 
short time by his mathematical studies, returned with such force 
that he vowed on the spot that henceforth the study of plants 
should be the great object of his life." I think we can fix the 
date of this incident by the first entry in a little " List of Botanical 
Excursions," which is : " 1841, June 19. Slingsby Moor and Ter- 
rington Carr." Similar entries are made during the remainder 
of his residence in England, his visits to Ireland and the Pyrenees, 
as well as throughout his South American travels ; while the 
remainder of his life was equally devoted to "the study of 
plants." 
The Phytologist was started in 1841 as a monthly magazine for 
British Botany especially, and Spruce contributed to it in the 
first and succeeding years accounts of his botanical excursions 
and notes on rare plants ; and it was probably his critical remarks 
on Carices, Mosses, and Hepaticae that led to a correspondence 
with Dr. ThoQias Taylor, one of the joint authors of the Miiscologia 
Britajinica, with Mr. William Wilson of Warrington, and with 
Mr. Borrer of Hen field. With all these eminent botanists he 
soon became intimate, and each in turn invited him to visit 
them. In the summer vacation of 1842 he stayed three weeks 
at Dunkerron, near Killarney, with Dr. Taylor, and visited a few 
other places, but the weather was bad, he had a severe cold, and 
he spent most of his time in the study of British and exotic 
mosses in his host's rich herbarium. 
Early in September of the same year, Mr. William Borrer, one 
of the most acute and enthusiastic British botanists, called upon 
him at York, and Spruce took him to Clifton Ings, on the banks 
of the Ouse, a locality for Leskea pulvinata and other rare mosses. 
In the following September (1843) Mr. Borrer again visited him, 
and they went together to Castle Howard to examine some of 
Spruce's favourite haunts in search of rare plants. From the 
date of their second meeting a correspondence began which 
continued at short intervals till within a few months of Spruce's 
departure on his South American expedition. After Mr. Borrer's 
death in 1862, a parcel of mosses, together with a packet of 
Spruce's letters, were given to Mr. W. Mitten, and the latter 
