BIOGRAPHY 
XXVll 
are still left several patches of moor which have never been 
thoroughly examined for Cryptogamia. On one of these — Barmby 
Moor — I found the rare Scalia Hookeri^ Lyell, in fruit on 
November 5, 1842, and I suppose I and Mr. Curnow are the 
only living botanists who have gathered it in Britain ; but Gottsche 
finds it near Hamburg, and Lindberg at Helsingfors. In 1856 
I gathered a second species, Scalia andina^ MSS. — thrice the size 
of its European congener — in the Eastern Andes of Peru." 
In his letter to Mr. Borrer of August 25, 1843, Spruce 
apologises for not having written before about some flowering 
plants Mr. Borrer had sent him several months earlier, and then 
adds : " But my attention was then, and continues to be, so 
entirely engrossed by the Musci and Hepaticse, that I could not 
expect to gather anything for you that you would consider at all 
interesting. As ray wish is to study the plants I collect, and not 
merely to amass an extensive collection, my small amount of 
leisure obliges me to confine my botanical pursuits within very 
narrow hmits." In the next letter (September 9, 1843), written 
after Mr. Borrer's second visit, when they gathered mosses 
together around Castle Howard, he determined one of their 
gatherings to be Bryum intermedium, Brid., a moss which had 
previously been confounded with other species, but which he had 
named from the very accurate descriptions in the work on 
European Mosses by Bruch and Schimper then in course of 
publication. He here shows his critical faculty and confidence 
in his own results by adding, " With B. turbinatum^ to which 
Hooker and Taylor united it, it has nothing to do ! " By this 
time he had so impressed his friend with his extensive knowledge 
and the accuracy of his judgment, that Mr. Borrer sent him many 
of his doubtful Mosses and Hepaticse to determine, and though 
Spruce disclaimed being "an authority" (as Mr. Borrer had termed 
him), he was always ready to give his opinion when he had' 
sufficient materials on which to form one. 
In March 1844 he wrote to Mr. Borrer in regard to certain 
species of Bryum : " Mr. Wilson was formerly of opinion that we 
should never be able to distinguish Br. ccespititium from these 
species by the eye, but I find now not the slightest difficulty in 
doing this — in fact, we appear to have had no eyes for seeing the 
Brya till operated upon by Bruch and Schimper ! " And at the 
end of this letter he says: " I shall certainly not 'declare off' 
from receiving your doubtful mosses (unarranged). I love to 
combat with difficulties, knowing that the solution of every 'crux' 
brings me nearer to a finished botanist." 
His paper on the Musci and Hepaticse of Teesdale, the result 
