the practice to ignore all the good that was done at Rugby before the time of Dr. Arnold, but with great injustice. Dr. Wooll, though not a profound scholar, had great taste for literature, and encouraged it wherever he saw an opportunity of doing so. There was a small but well-selected library, which was much used by the upper boys. But this was not all. There were lectures on natural philosophy, which were extremely popular, and some of the boys were trying their hands at waking air-pumps and electrical machines; there was also a course of comparative anatomy, which was extremely good, illustrated with well prepared specimens, and to these more than one were indebted for their first comprehensive views of physiology. The vicinity of the Lias pits at Newhold, and the diluvial gravel at Lawford, gave great opportunities for collecting fossils, some of which, after sixty years, the writer has now before him, and amongst the numerous collectors the subject of this memoir was not the least active. The specimens which he accumulated were utilised by Dr. Buckland, the late Dean of Westminster, in his "Reliqniæ Diluvianæ," and were ultimately presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.
In the autumn of 1824, having been offered the situation of Naturalist in the Blonde Frigate, (of which his eldest brother was Chaplain,) commanded by Captain Lord Byron, which was dispatched by Government to the Sandwich Islands to convey there the bodies of the King and Queen who had died in this country, he at once accepted it. During the voyage, which lasted eighteen months, he had the opportunity of visiting several places both on the eastern and western coasts of South America, and also numerous islands in the great Pacific Ocean, from which he brought home a large collection of objects of Natural History, amongst which were several, at that period, new to science, which, on his return in the year 1826, were deposited in the British Museum. He took Holy Orders a few mouths after his return, and for many years was located in a part of Leicestershire extremely favourable for natural research, where he had the pleasure of association with a very young but intelligent Botanist, now the honoured Professor Churchill Babington, who bade fair to be a shining light in the botanical world, but whose studies have since been diverted to classical and archæological literature, in which he has taken a very prominent position.
Mr. Bloxam's researches were not confined to any one department of Botany or Natural History. His communications on Conchology, Ornithology, Phænogamic and Cryptogamic plants, to leading periodicals were numerous; but, with the exception of his "Fasciculi of British Brambles," which have been appreciated highly by those who regard the greater part as mere forms of one, or perhaps, two species, as well as by those Botanists who look upon every form as distinct, his most useful work was amongst the Fungi, in which his neighbourhood was peculiarly rich. Many of the most interesting species have been recorded in the notices of British Fungi by Messrs. Berkeley and Broome in the "Annals of Natural History," and a very curious genus has been dedicated to him by the same authors. In conjunction with Mr. Churchill Babington be was enabled to furnish a very copious list of the Phænogamous plants
