BIOGRAPHY 
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chess-player, and was especially fond of a joke, even at his own 
expense. And, in the words of his life-long friend, Mr. George 
Stabler, "he was always courteous and gentlemanly in his bearing, 
and ever affectionate, kind, and sympathising as a friend." 
As a friend and admirer for more than forty years, I may be 
allowed to give here my own estimate of him from a short 
obituary notice I wrote for Nature (February i, 1894): — 
Richard Spruce was tall and dark, with fine features of a 
somewhat southern type, courteous and dignified in manner, 
but with a fund of quiet humour which rendered him a most 
delightful companion. He possessed in a marked degree the 
faculty of order, which manifested itself in the unvarying neatness 
of his dress, his beautifully regular handwriting, and the orderly 
arrangement of all his surroundings. Whether in a native hut 
on the Rio Negro or in his Httle cottage in Yorkshire, his 
writing-materials, his books, his microscope, his dried plants, his 
stores of food and clothing — all had their proper places, where 
his hand could be laid upon them in a moment. It was this 
habit of order, together with his passion for thoroughness in all 
he undertook, that made him so admirable a collector. He was 
full of anecdote, and even when suffering from his complicated 
and painful illnesses, an hour would rarely pass without some 
humorous remark or pleasant recollection of old times. He 
was a man who, however depressing were his conditions or 
surroundings, made the best of his life. He was a Liberal in 
politics as in religion, a true lover of work and workers of what- 
ever class or country ; and nothing more excited his indignant 
wrath than to hear of the petty but often cruel persecutions to 
which the labouring classes were (and still are) so often subjected. 
He was an enthusiastic lover of nature in all its varied manifesta- 
tions, from the grandeur of the virgin forest or the glories of the 
sunset on the snowy peaks of the Andes, to the minutest details 
of the humblest moss or hepatic. In all his words and ways he 
was a true gentleman, and to possess his personal friendship was 
a privilege and a pleasure. 
He was buried at Terrington (the parish in which he was 
born, Ganthorpe being only a hamlet) beside his father and 
mother, in accordance with his own directions to his executor, 
Mr. Matthew B. Slater of Malton. 
It now only remains to give some indication of his scientific 
labours as judged by his fellow-botanists. 
His great characteristic was the thoroughness of his work. 
As a British botanist he quickly made his mark, and very soon 
