145 varieties of New Zealand ferns. In two parts. Part I

'Herbert Boucher Dobbie was born on 13 February 1852 at Hayes, Middlesex, England, the son of Herbert Main Dobbie, an officer of the Madras Army, and his wife, Ellen Locker... In 1875 Dobbie sailed to New Zealand in the Lutterworth and began work in Auckland as a fitter and turner with Fraser and Tinne. Two years later he took a similar position with the government railways but quickly transferred to the drawing office. He travelled extensively, both on his penny-farthing bicycle and on foot, collecting ferns as he went.... Dobbie married Charlotte Anderson Gilfillan at Parnell on 31 January 1880.... Dobbie's collecting culminated in the production of his first, rather crude, book on New Zealand ferns, consisting of full-size, white silhouettes on blue paper. The books were hand-made by mounting fern fronds on sheets of glass and directing sunlight through these onto sheets of home-made blueprint paper. The book appeared in at least three versions over the year.... In the early 1900s he built a house and established a fernery in Market Road, where he lived for the remainder of his life.... In 1921 Dobbie published New Zealand ferns. With its fine photographs of fern specimens, hints on collection and cultivation and delightful essays on fern-collecting expeditions it was an entirely different book from that of 1880.... Dobbie was a man of many skills and interests, always willing to try his hand at something new, innovative, independent and highly competent. He was an expert wood-carver, but an accident with a chisel left him with a rigid finger on his right hand. He painted a little, wrote 16 novels - though none were ever published - and played several musical instruments.... Herbert Dobbie died at Auckland on 8 August 1940, survived by his wife (who died in 1952) and six of their seven children.-- taken from the biography of Dobbie in Te Ara, October 2019.