Norwich and Halesworth , 1785-1820. xxi 
In 1813, owing to the illness of his only brother x , my father 
spent five months with him in Devonshire and Cornwall, 
which counties he diligently explored for Musci, Hepaticae, 
and lichens especially. The Trinity House yacht having 
been placed at his disposal, he visited the Scilly Islands, whence 
he writes to Mr. Turner : c The first thing that caught my 
attention was the situation of the little town of St. Mary’s, 
which so much resembled that of Reikevik that I could hardly 
help fancying for some time that I was in Iceland . . . nor is 
the surrounding country so much unlike as you would perhaps 
expect, for except where there are enclosures of stone the 
surface is equally barren.’ He found mosses and lichens to 
be far from luxuriant in the islands, and at the time parched 
almost to a cinder, there having been no rain for many weeks. 
In the same year he had two interesting visitors at Hales- 
worth ; one was his old friend Jorgen Jorgensen, who in 
a record of his life, printed in Tasmania 1 2 , speaks of the hearty 
welcome he received, adding : ‘ Availing myself of the quiet 
retirement of this country residence I shut myself up and 
wrote an account of the Icelandic Revolution, in which 
I introduced various anecdotes of Scandinavian history. 
I presented it to Sir Joseph Banks.’ 
The other visitor was Dr. Thomas Taylor 3 of Dunkerron, 
Kerry, an excellent Irish museologist, who spent three weeks 
with him over his own and Turner’s herbarium. The latter 
was lent for the purpose, and was of especial interest as 
containing the types of the ‘ Muscologia Hibernica/ In a letter 
to Mr. Turner, Taylor is described as having been born in 
India, and up to his seventh year knowing no language but 
Hindustani ; he was then shipped to Ireland in a vessel where 
1 Joseph Hooker, junr., died in 1815 of consumption, for which the treatment 
in vogue then, and for many years afterwards, was ‘ powerful medicines and absti- 
nence from nourishing food.’ He was an excellent British entomologist. His 
collection of insects was purchased by the British Museum : my father’s is now in 
the Norwich Museum. 
2 Ross’s Hobart Town Almanack and Van Diemen’s Land Annual for 1835, 
p. 138. The article is anonymous, entitled ‘ A Shred of Autobiography.’ 
3 Died at Dunkerron, 1848. He was joint author of the Muscologia Britannica. 
