798 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
Mr. Marquand tells us that he practised at Towcester. During the few 
years that he was able to follow his profession he was very successful. 
While on a visit to Torquay he became acquainted with Miss Laura 
Cecilia Newman, daughter of Mr. Henry Newman, of London, and in 
1835 was married to that lady. They had one son, John Henry, who 
was born in 1836. The marriage did not prove a happy one, for within 
two years Mrs. Ralfs (with her infant son) went to live with her parents, 
who were then residing in France ; she afterwards travelled in Italy, 
but returned to France, where she died in 1848. 
In 1837 Mr. Ralfs’s health became so bad, his lungs being found to 
be seriously affected, that he was obliged to relinquish his practice and 
to reside in one of the health-resorts on the south-western coast. After 
visiting Torquay, he settled down, in November 1837, at Penzance, 
which continued to be his home during the rest of his life. In 1838 he 
contributed the botanical portion of a guide to Ilfracombe by Banfield. 
In 1839 he published his first book, 4 The British Phaenogamous Plants 
and Ferns ; arranged on the Linnaean System, and analysed after the 
method of Lamarck ’ ; this consisted of a dichotomous key to the genera 
and species, with an analysis of the natural orders. It did not pretend 
to compete with the larger “ Floras,” but was intended as a guide to the 
quick determination of species ; and the simple straightforward language 
employed, the judicious selection of practical characters, and the small 
compass of the book admirably adapted it to the purposes of a pocket 
manual. At the commencement of 1841, Mr. Ralfs opened a correspon- 
dence with the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, whom he had met some years 
previously ; this resulted in a close friendship, and Ralfs and Berkeley 
appear to have constantly consulted one another on questions connected 
with the Algae and Fungi. Berkeley’s correspondence (preserved in 
the Botanical Department of the British Museum) contains some 
hundreds of letters from Ralfs, many of them consisting of four closely 
written quarto pages, and containing pen-and-ink drawings. Ralfs 
seemed then to have settled down to the study of the Desmids and 
Diatoms, but continued to give a general attention to Fungi and other 
plants. 
The summers of 1841 and several subsequent years were spent in 
visits to Ilfracombe and various parts of Wales, his longest stay usually 
being at Dolgelly. In 1842 he was accompanied on his Welsh trip by 
Borrer. In this year Ralfs sent a description of Desmidium compression 
(a new species) to Dr. Balfour for the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. 
In 1843-4-5 he contributed to the same Society a series of papers on the 
Desmids and Diatoms, and in one of them he mentioned that the total 
number of Desmids previously recorded in the British Floras was four — 
two Desmidia and two Euastra. These papers were published in the 
4 Annals of Natural History ’ and in the 4 Transactions ’ of the Society. 
They contain figures and descriptions of a number of species of Diatoms, 
and over sixty Desmids, of which sixteen were new. In 1845 also ap- 
peared his paper, 4 On the genera Spirulina and Coleochsete ,’ A. N. H., xvi. 
p. 308. . . . 
In 1848, after several delays occasioned by illness, his great work 
was published, 4 The British Desmidiese,’ probably the finest monograph 
