162 
THE LATE REV. W. W. NEWBOULD. 
I am fully aware that this is very personal, and to most 
will be very trivial, but it is to the full characteristic of the 
heart and disposition of the man, and as such I mention it. 
This, then, was the beginning of Mr. Newbould’s direct 
assistance in my work on the Bedfordshire Flora—work which 
the local society is still actively pushing on. 
In one of my botanical rambles with him in South Beds 
(August 9th, 1876), a curious incident occurred, illustrating 
in a remarkable way the restricted nature of vision. We 
came across a little bare patch in the corner of a field, shortly 
after we had sat down and marked off nearly 200 plants as 
seen. Pointing to the ground, Mr. Newbould said, “ There’s 
a new plant for to-day.” I stooped and picked up the 
fruiting stage of Carum bulbocastanum, which at once caught 
my eye. To my surprise, he said he had not seen that plant, 
and picked up Fumaria densiflora , which grew side by side 
with it. It seemed impossible not to have seen the two at 
once; perhaps, though, it was not surprising that my less 
trained eyes should have fixed upon the more conspicuous 
plant, but it was very remarkable that he himself had not 
seen the Carum . I need hardly say the tenour of our con¬ 
versation for some minutes was turned to things non- 
botanical. 
Perhaps the most interesting hours, botanically speaking, 
I remember, were spent with Mr. Newbould and the late Mr. 
R. A. Pryor, B.A., of Hatfield, a botanist of well-known 
critical ability, in the critical examination of the Herbarium 
of Abbott, the author of “ Flora Bedfordiensis,” which, by 
kind permission of its owner (the late Mr. Clias. Longuet 
Higgins, M.A., of Purvey Abbey, Bedfordshire), was passed 
over into my possession for a few weeks. I had carefully 
examined this from beginning to end, and made copious 
notes ; then we three worked through it together. For a long 
time the results were used mainly for my own purposes, but 
at length Mr. Pryor compiled them anew, with some literary 
additions, and they were published by him in the “ Journal 
of Botany” for 1881, pp. 40 and 67. One of Mr. Pryor’s 
last journeys before his too early death (February 18th, 1881), 
was to see me at Cambridge in connection with this matter. 
I know what a shock his death was to Mr. Newbould, though 
not altogether unanticipated by him ; and several times he 
expressed surprise why a feeble old man like himself, who 
could do so little, should be spared, while one comparatively 
young, and of brilliant promise, should be taken away. This 
again illustrates Mr. Newbould’s characteristic and genuine 
humility. 
