— 2 
The demands of his business and the res angusta aomi rarely allowed 
Mitten to leave his home, and in these days of constant traveling it is strange 
to read of one who, as Mr. W. B. Hemsley informs us, told Sir William 
Hooker in 1854, had only been away from home for two week-days for five 
years. When his daughter Flora, in later years, relieved him of some of his 
business, he had more leisure, and on one occasion he made a visit to Switz- 
erland, of which he cherished very pleasant recollections, and in the course 
of which he gathered many things previously only known to him in herbar- 
ium specimens. He told me of the particular interest which he had found in 
visiting the district, in which Schleicher had botanized. 
It was not until late in the autumn of his long life that I had the privilege 
of a personal acquaintance with Mitten. My first letters from him, dated in the 
early part of the year 1895, are in reference to Pottia caespitosa and other 
rare Sussex mosses which he most kindly directed me to find. His letters 
are models of that painstaking accuracy which, I believe, characterized his 
work generally, and they were also full of encouragement to me, who was 
little more than a beginner at the time, as he concluded his first letter with 
the remark: “ I shall always be glad to hear of any new or strange moss you 
may meet with, and hope you may find as. much to interest you in mosses as I 
have for so many years.” The implied promise of assistance was amply 
redeemed in our subsequent correspondence. 
My opportunities of seeing Mitten were few and far bet ween, *but it was 
always a pleasure to look in and see him in his quiet home, surrounded by 
his garden in which he took so much interest, and which harbored many rare 
and curious plants. On the last occasion on which I saw him he was regret- 
ting the wild luxuriance of several rare British plants which had spread 
beyond all bounds and which, as he observed, wanted all the place to them- 
selves. On another occasion, in 1903, I had the pleasure of showing him 
fresh specimens of Weisia Mittenii, which I had recently found and in which 
he was much interested, as it had not, I believe, been gathered since his ori- 
ginal discovery of it in 1846. 
Mitten was an associate of the Linnean Society of London, to which 
he was elected in 1847, an honorary member of the Linnean Society of New 
South Wales, and of the New Zealand Institute, and also of the Brighton 
Natural History Society, and the South' Eastern Union of Scientific Societies. 
Mittenia Gottsche was a genus of hepaticae allied to Pallavicinia (Ann. 
Sci. Nat. Ser. 5, I. 1862), and Lindberg in 1863 put forward the genus Mit- 
tenia of mosses as a substitute for Mniopsis already in use. 
There is an excellent portrait of Mitten in the October number of the 
Journal of Botany, accompanying an interesting notice of him by Mr. W. 
Botting Hemsley, from which I have borrowed a few details. I am also 
indebted to his daughter, Miss Flora Mitten, for assistance in compiling 
these notes, and to Mr. A. Gepp, of the British Museum, for a greater part of 
the subjoined list of Mittens’ publications, mostly taken from the Royal 
Society’s catalogue. Mitten leaves a widow who is 93 years of age, three 
unmarried daughters, and a fourth who is the wife of the famous naturalist 
