William Mitten
Encyclopedia
William Mitten was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 pharmaceutical chemist and authority on bryophytes who has been called "the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century".

He built up a collection of some 50,000 specimens of bryophytes (mosses, lichens and liverworts) at his home in Hurstpierpoint
Hurstpierpoint
Hurstpierpoint is a village in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. Together with Sayers Common it forms one of the Mid Sussex civil parishes, with an area of 2029.88 ha and a population of 6,264 persons....

, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. The collection was largely made up of specimens collected around the world by other collectors and is now at the New York Botanical Garden
New York Botanical Garden
- See also :* Education in New York City* List of botanical gardens in the United States* List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City- External links :* official website** blog*...

, having been purchased after his death. These collectors included Richard Spruce
Richard Spruce
Richard Spruce was an English botanist. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent approximately 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to the mouth, and was one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places where he collected specimens.The plants and objects collected...

 and also Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...

, who subsequently became Mitten's son-in-law.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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