CHILDHOOD 205 



edited by his cousin, Mrs Lydia Fisher, and published a few 

 years after his death. My indebtedness to this volume in what 

 follows will be apparent. 



William Henry Harvey came of the old Quaker stock that 

 has given to Ireland several of her most enthusiastic naturalists. 

 To this group belong Thomas Wright of Cork, Joseph Wright 

 of Belfast, Greenwood Pirn of Dublin ; all of whom, immersed 

 in affairs of business, devoted their leisure hours to science, 

 and progressed far in the branches of zoology or botany to 

 which they addressed themselves. Harvey's family belonged 

 to Youghal, on the coast of Co. Cork. His father was a well- 

 known merchant of Limerick, in which town he himself was 

 born, the youngest of eleven children, just a hundred years 

 ago in February 1811. Even as a child, his love of natural 

 history made itself apparent, and fortunately his schooling 

 tended to foster this taste. After a few years at Newtown 

 near Waterford, he went to the historic school of Ballitore, in 

 the county of Kildare. These Irish Quaker schools have long 

 favoured the teaching of science, and Ballitore at that time 

 was no exception. The head master was James White, a keen 

 naturalist, and himself a writer on Irish botany 1 ; and probably 

 the encouragement that young Harvey received at Ballitore had 

 much to do with the shaping of his life. At the age of fifteen, 

 we find him writing of his collection of butterflies and shells, 

 and already referring to the group in which he subsequently 

 achieved his greatest fame : 



" I also intend to study my favourite and useless class, 

 Cryptogamia. I think I hear thee say, Tut-tut ! But no matter. 

 To be useless, various, and abstruse, is a sufficient recommenda- 

 tion of a science to make it pleasing to me. I don't know how 

 I shall ever find out the different genera of mosses. Lichens 

 I think will be easy" (he little knew them !) "but fungi I shall 

 not attempt ; not at all from their difficulty ', but only because 

 they are not easily preserved. But do not say that the study of 

 Cryptogamia is useless. Remember that it was from the genus 

 Fucus that iodine was discovered." 



Another letter of this period, written when he was sixteen, 



1 An essay on the indigenous grasses of Ireland. 8vo. Dublin, 1808. 



