220 WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY 



of his death in the summer of 1865 ; it was completed by 

 J. G. Baker and published three years later. During the winter 

 of 1865, Harvey himself became seriously ill, and, an immediate 

 change to a mild climate being recommended, he and his wife 

 went to stay at Torquay with Lady Hooker, and there he died 

 on 1 5th May, 1866. 



Harvey was only fifty-five years of age when he died, but 

 he had won for himself a foremost place among systematic 

 botanists. Life, as Lubbock has said, is measured by thought 

 and action, not by time; and according to this standard, Harvey's 

 life-cup was already full and running over. He had used to the 

 utmost the gifts which he possessed. The capital with which he 

 entered on his career comprised a critical eye, a deft hand, and 

 that scientific enthusiasm without which no botanist ever travels 

 far. On the other side of the account, he had two serious 

 deterrants, a rather delicate body, and a complete absence of 

 scientific training. "Apropos of dissection," he writes to Hooker 

 in his younger days, " I am a miserable manipulator, and should 

 be very grateful for a few lessons." From the beginning he had 

 a shrewd perception of what lay within his reach, and what was 

 beyond it. " The extent to which I mean to go in botany," he 

 wrote at twenty-one years, "is to know British plants of all 

 kinds as well as possible; to know Algae of all countries 

 specially well ; to collect all foreign Cryptogamia that may fall 

 in my way, and to know them moderately well... My reason for 

 choosing the Algae is pure compassion; they being sadly 

 neglected by the present generation, though at a former time 

 they were in high favour." 



In the letters written even in boyhood we see foreshadowed 

 the direction and extent of his future researches. " Exactly 

 what he determined in youth to accomplish," says Dr John 

 Todhunter in his Preface to Harvey's Memoir, "he accomplished; 

 the work which he took upon himself to do he did, honestly 

 and thoroughly ; the fame which he desired to achieve, he 

 achieved." He saw that his strength lay in discrimination, 

 description, and illustration, and to these the necessary census 

 task which forms the groundwork on which great theories may 

 be built up he confined himself. 



