Scarcely anything is recorded of the earlier Lancashire botanists. Of John Dewhurst, mentioned as the first president of the restored botanical society at the beginning of the present century, little more is known than that he was a fustian-cutter by trade, and lived at Red Bank. John Shaw, now of Eccles (since deceased), remembers seeing him in his "pride of place" at the "Lord Nelson," at Ringley, where the annual meeting was at that time accustomed to be held, the first Sunday in May, Mr. S. being then a child, and this the first botanical meeting he was present at. Dewhurst died in Salford, about 1820, at the age of about seventy. He was of a good and well-to-do family, but in the position of "poor relation." A kind friend of the Lancashire botanists in those days,--Mr. Mitchell, of Bradford Hall,--gave Dewhurst and Hobson a piece of ground adjoining his house for a botanic garden. In this they were accustomed to deposit the roots of plants procured in the course of their rambles, going up every Monday morning for the purpose. It happened at that time that there were great operatives' political meetings. One day, in 1812, it came to Mr. Mitchell's ears that the two botanists were engaged to attend one of them, and at the same moment he had private information that the magistrates intended to disperse it, and send the leaders to prison,--Hobson being one of the marked, and certain to be apprehended. Luckily for all parties, the meeting was appointed for the very day when the two botanists were accustomed to visit their garden. Up they went as usual, early in the morning, from which time till late in the afternoon their host contrived, probably without much difficulty, to keep them engaged with liquid refreshment, and thus saved Hobson at all events from imprisonment. As the two men journeyed homewards, they met the soldiers and their captives on the way to gaol. One of Dewhurst's intimate associates was old William Evans, of Tyldesley, now long deceased, a friend from boyhood of Dr. Hull, Dr. Tomlinson, and Dr. Withering, and companion also of George Caley. "He was always after botany," says a letter respecting him, "and travelled many thousands of miles in quest of plants." That excellent botanist and worthy old man, Joseph Evans, of Boothstown, to whom we have had occasion to express our acknowledgments in the "Manchester Flora," is son of the renowned William. Born in 1803, the lad, when only ten years of age, used to be taken to the meetings, walking, of course, every inch of the way, both there and back. He was also his father's constant companion in the fields. Ah, how much is imbibed under such kindly teaching, and how much more than we actually learn is excited and animated! It is not so much what a man, even one's own father, tells us, tutor-fashion, that does the good for one's entire life-time, as what he _inspires_ us with. The man, or the woman either, upon whom we look back as