xiv Richard Spruce. 
they abound with interjected suggestions, often most pregnant. 
For instance, the question of the evolution of the leafage of 
the Hepaticae and its relation to that of higher plants may 
be raised in a foot-note; the water-supply and the biological 
relationships of the group may be incidents of the description 
of the finding of a new species, and so forth. The inspiration, 
if not the facts, of many of the supposed new points in the 
biology of the Hepaticae, which their study as fashionable 
ancestral land-forms has recently been bringing forward, will 
be found by the diligent student in Spruce’s writings. Had 
he published, as one gathers he had the intention of doing, 
a general treatise upon the Hepaticae, instead of dispersing 
his biological observations through a series of systematic 
papers, there is little doubt the value of his work would have 
been recognized earlier and more widely. 
Tall and spare of frame, Spruce had, despite ill-health, 
a constitution of some power to endure the hardships of his 
many years of American life. ‘ I am not one of the for- 
wardest to face perils, but once embarked I think no more 
of the consequences,’ he says of himself, and his travels 
confirm it. Warm-hearted and impulsive, he was quick to 
wrath, yet readily appeased. A natural shyness was the 
frequent cause of misunderstanding between himself and 
others, and doubtless had, along with ill-health, to do with 
the comparative isolation from the botanical world of his 
later life. At the same time there was in him a touch of im¬ 
periousness, and whether from mortified vanity or ungratified 
sympathy he was inclined to resent what he regarded as his 
neglect by the botanical world, and showed it in a cynicism 
which his sense of humour at times made genial. 
Mr. Slater, of Malton, and Mr. Massee, of Kew, have been 
so good as to furnish information regarding Dr. Spruce, and 
the former gentleman has also supplied the photograph 
of him in his later years—the only one available—from which 
our portrait is taken. 
ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR. 
