pdf 31 MB - BSBI Archive

86 John bland wood, m.d.
Botany,' by explaining all recorded instances of structure wliicli
did not fit in well with that system. He was also engaged in
studying the effects of various new (or proposed) vegetable therapeutic
agents ; and he was interested greatly in the possibility of
checking infection, even in towns, by police regulations for the
isolation of patients. His amiability of character and intense
scientific enthusiasm miiversally commanded sympathy. Mr.
Clarke died very suddenly, of apoplexy, at Hampstead, February
4th, 1890.
JOHN BLAND WOOD, M.D.
Dr. John Bland Wood died at his residence at Withington, near
Manchester, on February 11th. He was born Dec. 3rd, 1813, at
or near Pontefract, where he received his early education. He
subsequently entered the medical profession and studied at Dublin,
Edinburgh, and London, as well as in Germany. At Broughtou,
not then so closely joined to Manchester, he took up his residence
and soon established an extensive practice, being elected a Fellow
of the Koyal College of Surgeons in 1859. His health beginning
to fail, about 1875 he gradually withdrew from practice, and about
two years ago removed to Withington.
By his death the botanical world loses one of its oldest
members, whose name will be less familiar to the present generation
than it was to botaniste of two or three decades ago, but
which still holds a place amongst many who have made British
plants, and more particularly British mosses, their study. It will
always be to Broughton that the recollections of his old friends will
turn as the spot made familiar by his vigorous personality, and there
yet remain some in whose minds will never be effaced during life the
remembrance of jovial meetings that have there taken place around
the hospitable board, at which he so genially and energetically
presided ; the merry expeditions that have there been planned
the long debates over critical and disputed species, carried on far
into the night under the soothing influence of a cloud of grey
smoke. Very few botanists have been as careful as he was over
the drying and preparation of their specimens, and especially his
collections of Grasses, Carices, &c,, made during the " forties " and
" fifties " were surpassingly thorough and complete. Dr. Wood
employed Richard Buxton to collect for him, and paid the expense
of his journeys into North Wales and elsewhere : he is
referred to, though his name is not mentioned, in Buxton's
' Botanical Guide ' (p. x), as " a gentleman who had just begun to
study botany," in 1839. In later years it was to the Mosses that
he devoted himself with his usual superabundant energy, and he
carried on an active correspondence with Wilson, now preserved in
the Botanical Department, British Museum, and also with Schimper,
Moore, Marratt, and many other collectors ; the youngest if they
showed promise being always welcome to his advice and assistance,
and sure of a series of emphatic lectures on all points of detail.