4 INTRODUCTION 



mainly devoted to making known in England the great dis- 

 coveries of the Hofmeisterian epoch. To Henfrey belongs the 

 credit of being the first of our countrymen to recognise the full 

 significance of the new morphology, the general recognition of 

 which, however, he did not live to see. Henfrey was an ex- 

 tremely competent all-round Botanist whose single-minded 

 devotion to his subject should not be allowed to fall into 

 oblivion. 



WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY is a representative of a numerous 

 class among the followers of Botany in this country. A man 

 of great personal charm and high culture, he was attracted into 

 the subject from the love of collecting. His special field was 

 that of the Marine Algae, in which he stood unrivalled. Harvey 

 was an exquisite delineator of the seaweeds of which he was so 

 enthusiastic a student. The memoir, based on his journals and 

 letters, which was published shortly after his death, is a book 

 well worth reading for its intimate sketches of the naturalists of 

 his day and the vivid notes on his extended travels in the 

 colonies and elsewhere. 



MILES JOSEPH BERKELEY, like his contemporary Harvey, 

 was a cryptogamic botanist. He was a voluminous contributor 

 to the systematic literature of the Fungi over a period of fifty 

 years, as well as being a pioneer in the field of plant pathology. 

 The systematic collections accumulated during his long life form 

 one of the glories of the Kew Herbarium. 



SIR JOSEPH HENRY GILBERT'S outlook on plants was 

 entirely different from that of any of the foregoing. He re- 

 garded the plant essentially as the chemical offspring of the 

 environment to which it was exposed. His life was devoted 

 to the study of soils and crops in conjunction with Sir John 

 Lawes. To these classic investigations carried out at Rotham- 

 sted, Gilbert brought the trained skill of the chemist. 



WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON was a great all-round 

 naturalist of the Victorian period whose work as a Zoologist 

 gained him high distinction long before his attention became 

 seriously concentrated upon his famous studies into the structure 

 of the fossil plants of the Coal Measures. Though these re- 

 searches were pursued without any marked contemporary 



