224
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Walthamstow (where his parents had settled in the preceding
year), it is believed in the still existing "Clock House," a spacious
yellow-brick Georgian mansion with stable outbuildings, standing
in once extensive grounds.
Edward became a partner in the banking firm of Forster
Lubbock Bosanquets and Co.5, afterwards styled Forster Lubbocks
Forster and Clarke, of 11 Mansion-house-street, E.C., which has
developed into the well-known Robarts, Lubbock and Co., of
which the late Lord Avebury (formerly Sir John Lubbock), was
chief.
In 1796, Edward married : his wife, Mary Jane (b. 11 July
1763 d. 14 January 1845), was only daughter of one Abraham
Greenwood, of whom I have been unable to learn any particulars-
His botanical tastes were of life-long duration. In boyhood
he collected the local wild plants of his Walthamstow home in
company with his two brothers, and the present volume bears
evidence that his habit of noting and recording botanical finds
persisted into old age.
He paid considerable attention to cryptogams, particularly
lichens : a manuscript list of some 40 of these obscure plants.
recorded by him from Epping Forest, is given in his inter-leaved
copy of Turner and Dillwyn's Botanist's Guide, 1805.
Edward Forster was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society
in 1800, and was appointed Treasurer of the Society in 1816, and
one of its Vice-Presidents in 1828. On 22 February 1821, he was
elected F.R.S.
In 1848 he wrote for the Ray Society a short biographical
notice of George Scott, F.R.S. (b. 1719 d. 1780), the antiquary,
of Woolston Hall, Chigwell, nephew of Dr. William Derham of
Upminster, and editor of his "Select Remains of the Learned
John Ray" and also of "Mr. Ray's Itineraries," 1760."
He died 23 February 1849, at Woodford, in his 84th year, of
cholera, and lies buried in the family vault in St. Mary's Church-
yard at Walthamstow, together with his wife and his brother
Benjamin : but there is no inscription to his memory.
A subscription portrait in oils was painted by Eddis in 1836,
and presented to the Linnean Society, in whose Meeting Room it
5. The Bosanquet family were lords of the manor of Low Hall, Walthamstow, from 1741
down to 1877, and resided at Forest House, Leyton. One of its members, William Bosanquet,
founded the banking firm referred to.
6. Correspondence of John Ray, Appendix A., 1848, p. 481.