Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lowe, Richard Thomas
LOWE, RICHARD THOMAS (1802–1874), naturalist, was born 4 Dec. 1802, and in 1825 graduated B.A. from Christ's College, Cambridge, as senior optime; he took holy orders in the same year, and obtaining a travelling bachelorship he visited Madeira in 1828 in order to improve his health. In 1832 he became English chaplain in the island, where he remained till 1854. In 1830 he published his accurate ‘Primitiæ Faunæ et Floræ Maderæ et Portus Sancti’ in the ‘Cambridge Philosophical Transactions,’ and issued in various periodicals at later dates other scientific papers, of which his ‘Novitiæ Floræ Maderensis’ (1838) is perhaps the most valuable.
On his return to England he accepted the living of Lea in Lincolnshire, and set to work upon ‘A Manual Flora of Madeira.’ The first part appeared in 1857, and the fifth, completing the first volume, in 1868. Lowe paid repeated visits to Madeira and the neighbouring islands, in order to complete the work, but he did not publish more than the first part of the second volume, which was issued in 1872. In April 1874 he set out for another visit to Madeira on board the Liberia, but the ship foundered with all hands off the Scilly Isles about the 13th of the month. The Rosaceous genus Lowea of Dr. Lindley is now absorbed in Hulthemia.
[Journ. Bot. 1874, pp. 192, 287; Cat. Sc. Papers, iv. 98, 99.]