of visiting the country, as there was but a single purpose among the whole. One of his warmest friends was Thomas Townley, originally of Blackburn, where the two men became acquainted, subsequently of Liverpool, and eventually of our own city. The circumstance is worth mentioning on two accounts. Next to a man's acts and principles, it is interesting to know who were his closest and oldest associates, since there is always a reciprocal though unconscious influence passing from one to the other, which explains a good deal of character; and in the second place, in addition to being an excellent botanist, Townley was a neat painter in water-colours, and claimed, with a justice that is most willingly acknowledged, the credit of drawing forth the youthful genius of his friend's son, the Robert Crozier of to-day. It is pleasant to think that the beautiful pictures which now decorate so many walls had their impulse in the little palette of the old botanist. Townley and Crozier were the first to design a "Manchester Flora," and but for Crozier's infirm health during the latter years of his life, the crude catalogue of 1840 would have been followed by a complete work, in which his own long observations and those of the other leading botanists of the district would have been consolidated. Crozier died before he could do the part intended. Townley, however, never let go the idea, and two years after Crozier's death his zeal and willingness as wielder of the "pen of the ready writer," and his wonderful memory for poetry, which here had congenial exercise, appeared in the work commonly known as "Buxton's Guide." So much poetry had Townley ready for introduction into it, that the useful and accurate little volume in question might easily have been swelled to double the size.[20] Townley could recite passages from any part of Pope's Homer, and such was his admiration of that poem, that he repeatedly declared if he had his younger days before him he would learn Greek in order to peruse it in the original. It may be added, in reference to Crozier, who was a well-built, portly man, quiet but merry, fond of a joke and a good story, mild and gentle, yet thoroughly independent, that his long and upright life, rejoiced by hearty and abiding love of nature, and the respect of every one who truly knew him, closed in 1847. He died in Peel-street, Hulme, on Friday, the 16th of April, and was interred at the Harpurhey Cemetery on the following Tuesday. Never was there a better example of the scientific man in humble life, or of the practical kind-heartedness and generosity that spring from simple, God-fearing virtue. His old friend, Townley, survived him ten years, coming to his own end September 9th, 1857.