EARLY LIFE 167 



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Lindley's career which he had written under the title of " Sketch 

 of my Father's Life : written for my sons, daughters and grand- 

 children." In what follows I have made free use of Lord Lind- 

 ley's manuscript. In the second place, Mr W. Botting Hemsley 

 has had the great kindness not only to supply me with much 

 valuable information of which he was possessed concerning 

 Lindley's scientific work but to examine manuscripts, letters, 

 etc. at Kew bearing thereon and to allow me to make use of the 

 results of his interesting investigations. 



Hence my task has become merely that of an editor whose 

 chief duty is to fit the material provided by two distinguished 

 contributors into the prescribed space. Whatever credit is due 

 to this first attempt to sketch the career of Lindley, belongs to 

 these two gentlemen whose remarkable kindness I have great 

 pleasure in acknowledging. 



Outline of Career. 



John Lindley was born on February 5, 1799, in Catton near 

 Norwich. His father, George Lindley, who came of an old 

 Yorkshire family, conducted a large nursery and fruit business 

 in Catton. To the facts that John Lindley became in early 

 years an accomplished field botanist and also learned much of 

 practical horticulture may be ascribed the close touch which he 

 maintained throughout his botanical career with the practical 

 side of botany. It is not too much to say that John Lindley 

 was the unique representative of a class of man which he 

 himself declared had never existed, namely one which combined 

 the qualities of a good physiologist with those of a practical 

 gardener of the greatest experience. John Lindley's youthful 

 ambition was however to be not a savant but a soldier, and 

 though, owing to the inability of his father to buy him a 

 commission, that ambition was not fulfilled, the instinct which 

 prompted it found frequent expression throughout Lindley's 

 life. As his career demonstrates, he was a first class fighting 

 man. The curious may find in the pages of the Gardeners 

 Chronicle records of the combats which he waged on behalf of 



