Thomas Taylor, Botanist

Taylor, Thomas, M.D., a botanist of some note, stated to have been an Irishman, was born near the end of the 18th century. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1807, took his medical degree in 1814, and became attached to some of the Dublin hospitals. He exhibited a marked predilection for the study of nature, and in his excursions into the County of Wicklow, with his friends Dr. Whitley Stokes and Mr. Mackay, evinced those talents that afterwards distinguished him. He was the joint author, with Sir William J. Hooker, of the Muscologia Britannica (1818), and contributed the articles "Mosses" and "Ferns" to Mackay's Flora Hibernica. He added a new genus to the order Hepaticae, and a good many undescribed species in the order of Lichens. He also gave to science a detailed account of the collection of John Templeton of Belfast, said to have been one of the earliest, as well as most distinguished and original of Irish zoologists. After the withdrawal of the government grant to the Cork Scientific Institution, to which he was Lecturer on Botany and Natural History, he retired to an estate at Dunkerron, near Kenmare, where he spent the remainder of his life, discharging the duties of a magistrate, occupying himself with country pursuits, and devoting his leisure to botany. He died February 1848.

Sources

16. Authors, Dictionary of British and American: S. Austin Allibone. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1859-'71.

115. Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science (3). Dublin, 1846-'77.