"From 1811 [Edward] Hobson took up the difficult study of mosses and liverworts, soon becoming expert in this area. By 1815 his discoveries led William Jackson Hooker to seek a meeting with him in Manchester. Impressed by Hobson's abilities in finding and distinguishing these little-studied cryptogamic plants, Hooker gave him a microscope and began a correspondence with him in order to receive further information and specimens. With Hooker's encouragement, Hobson produced and sold about twenty-five sets of A Collection of Specimens of British Mosses and Hepaticae, known as Musci Britannici (2 vols., 1818-22). These dried specimens were designed to accompany Hooker and Thomas Taylor's Muscologia Britannica: Containing the Mosses of Great Britain and Ireland (1818), in which they were advertised. In preparing Musci Britannici, Hobson exchanged letters and specimens with a wide range of naturalists from different social classes."--Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
On hearing of Hobson's death, Hooker wrote: "His publication of specimens of British mosses and hepaticae will be a lasting testimony to his correctness and deep research into their beautiful families; and in this country he has been the first to set the example of giving to the world volumes which are devoted to the illustration of entire genera of cryptogamous plants by beautifully preserved specimens themselves." See: Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 2nd series, VI, 297-324.