BACTERIOLOGY 265 



Francis Kingdon, of Exeter, who was a connection Of Clifford 

 the mathematician. 



The passion for research now completely possessed Ward 

 and never left him for the rest of his life. He published papers 

 which added much to our knowledge of the Saprolegnieae a 

 group of fungi of aquatic habit, partly saprophytic and partly 

 parasitic. It is interesting to note that he was particularly 

 attracted by the mode in which the hyphae attack the tissues on 

 which they prey. This was a matter on which he subsequently 

 threw an entirely new light. He made the interesting discovery 

 of an aquatic Myxomycete, such a mode of existence being 

 hitherto unknown in the group, and worked out its life-history. 

 But his mind had now become definitely fixed on the problems 

 presented by plant diseases, and they remained the principal 

 occupation of his life. In their widest sense these resolve them- 

 selves into a consideration of the mode in which one organism 

 obtains its nutriment at the expense of another. This ranges 

 from a complete destruction of the host by the parasite to a 

 harmless and even advantageous symbiosis. He was thus 

 naturally led to an exhaustive study of the literature of the 

 Schizomycetes, and contributed an article on the group in 1886 

 to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which, for the time at any rate, 

 gives the best account of it, certainly in English, and probably 

 in any other language. When he supplemented this in 1902 by 

 the article on Bacteriology, it was largely to give an account 

 of his own important discoveries. In the earlier one, he had 

 pointed out the difficulties of a natural classification of Schizo- 

 mycetes due to their pleomorphism, which Lankester had 

 demonstrated in 1873. He returned to the subject in an article 

 in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science in 1892. It 

 may be noted that, in his British Association address at Toronto, 

 he took occasion to put in their proper relation the work of Cohn 

 and of his pupil Koch. 



In 1885, the Regius Professorship of Botany at Glasgow was 

 vacant by the transference of Prof. Balfour to Oxford. Ward 

 was a candidate with the warm support of his fellow-botanists. 

 It was thought that his Colonial services would weigh with the 

 Government ; but other influences were at work in favour of 



