Abstract
THE death on Feb. 29, at Oxford, of Dr. George Claridge Druee removes not only the best-known student of our British flora but also a remarkable personality. The charming story of his early life, which he has given us in the introduction to his “Flora of Buckinghamshire” shows how circumstances worked to shape his life and mould his character. He was born on May 23, 1850. The res angustae of his childhood threw him into the arms of Nature for his diversion, and his playthings were the wild flowers around the Northamptonshire village where his widowed mother had made her home. He tells how, by the lack of foresight of his guardian, he was debarred from a public school education, but the individuality which characterised his work through life, his independence, his undaunted persistence in arriving where others would have fallen short, may perhaps be traced to the less rigid training of his early years. In the woodlands near his home he studied the insect life as well as the plants, and by the age of fourteen had made a very representative collection of the local Lepidoptera; pupæ were dug for and larvæ bred, and plants were fixed in the memory by making carbon impressions of the leaves. Holidays spent in different localities in Bedfordshire on the greensand and chalk enlarged his knowledge of the flora and insect life.
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RENDLE, A. Dr. G. Claridge Druce, F.R.S. Nature 129, 426–427 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129426a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129426a0