166 
In 1912 Henry Groves, who had hitherto been the collabora- 
tes of all his brother's botanical work, died, and six years 
later James retired from the Army and Navy Stores, where he 
had become an Assistant Secretary, and left London for the 
Isle of Wight, residing first at Yarmouth and subsequently at 
Freshwater. Groves’ interest was henceforth centred on the 
Charophytes. In his brother’s lifetime he had already worked 
on the Characece of the West Indies, the group in Urban’s 
“ Symbol® Antillanse ” being described by the Messrs. Groves ; 
and he now studied not only foreign species of the family but 
wrote an account of the fossil Characece of the Purbeck Beds 
with Clement Reid (1916). 
“ The British Charophyta,” written in conjunction with 
Canon Bullock- Webster and printed for the Ray Society, is 
perhaps Groves’ most important work. The first volume, 
dealing with the Nitellece, appeared in 1920 ; the second, 
containing the Charece and an account of the geological 
history of the whole group by Groves, in 1924. The two 
volumes, which treat of thirty-two species and are finely 
illustrated with excellent plates throughout, form one of the 
most complete existing monographs of any group of British 
plants. Indeed, no similar work on any of our genera of 
flowering plants seems comparable with them. Two further 
fascicles of “ British and Irish Charophyta ” were issued with 
Canon Bullock- Webster in 1924. 
After the publication of the Monograph, Groves produced a - 
second paper with Clement Reid on the fossil forms — “ The 
Charophyta of the Lower Headon Beds of Hordle Cliffs ” ; 
but the energy of his later years was mainly devoted to the 
Characece of India, Madagascar and South Africa, on which 
he wrote papers in the Journal of the Linnean Society and 
elsewhere. At the time of his death he was engaged on the 
completion of a world-wide Conspectus of the entire family. 
James Groves was a born naturalist, who by dint of hard 
work became at an early age a leading exponent of British 
flowering plants, and subsequently an authority of world- wide 
repute on that obscure and difficult group, the Charophyta. 
His papers are characterised by a uniform precision, combined 
with sound sense, that is often lacking in contemporary work, 
and the intelligence and care displayed in the selection and 
preparation of his specimens make them models of their kind. 
In this respect the fascicles of Characece are perhaps unique. 
