170 JOHN LINDLEY 



headquarters of botanical science for England, its Colonies and 

 Dependencies. Is it due to our lack of gratitude or to our 

 mistrust of sculptors, that no statue of Lindley stands in the 

 grounds of Kew? In 1840 John Lindley was able to write to 

 Sir William Hooker: " It is rumoured that you are appointed to 

 Kew. If so I shall have still more reason to rejoice at the 

 determination I took to oppose the barbarous Treasury scheme 

 of destroying the place; for I of course was aware that the 

 stand I made and the opposition I created would destroy all 

 possibility of my receiving any appointment." Having regard 

 to the part which Lindley played in preserving Kew from the 

 devastating clutches of the politicians it is but fit that that Insti- 

 tution should contain the most valuable of Lindley's scientific 

 possessions, his orchid herbarium, that his general herbarium 

 is at Cambridge may be news to such Cambridge botanists as 

 in the days of a decade or two ago learned Botany without such 

 adventitious aids. 



In 1864 Lindley wrote to the late Sir Joseph Hooker to 

 say that he had made up his mind to sell his herbarium and 

 would prefer that the Orchids went to Kew. There it is 

 preserved, a monument of Lindley's skill and industry and of in- 

 estimable value to the systematist. Besides the actual specimens 

 it contains coloured drawings of the flowers of all the species 

 that came under his observation in the living state. In addition 

 to the herbarium, Kew possesses a large amount of Lindley's 

 scientific correspondence; letters to W. J. Hooker, 1828 1859 

 (230), 182 letters to Bentham and 35 to Henslow, and others 

 to which reference has been made already : altogether an in- 

 valuable mass of correspondence, selections from which it is to 

 be hoped may some day see the light of publication. 



Lindley's skill with brush and pencil may be admired in the 

 many plates which he executed in illustration of his various 

 monographs. His skill with the pen deserves at least remark. 

 Inasmuch however as nearly all the more distinguished of the 

 old school of botanists, Hales, Hooker, Gray, to mention but 

 a few, have in this respect a marked superiority over their 

 successors, it is not necessary to labour the question of literary 

 grace for either the moderns are indifferent on the subject or 



