Dec. 1, 1S06.] 



TI ARDWICKE'S SCIENCE -GOSSIP. 



265 



THE EMPTY CHAIR. 



" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

 But one dead lamb is there! 

 There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended. 

 But has one vacant chair." 



Longfellow. 



HERE was an old 

 custom, still ex- 

 taut in some re- 

 mote localities, 

 when the family 

 and friends assem- 

 bled around the 

 Christmas hearth, 

 'J^r- ^j/^Ni ■£ /"'•" to place an empty 



chair in honour of any one of 

 the number accustomed to 

 meet together at that season, 

 who had gone to " the silent 

 halls of death " since the 

 last annual gathering. The 

 course of time has brought 

 us towards the close of 

 another year, and it behoves 

 us to look about us and see 

 what friends are missing ; 

 and we would fain, although 

 it may be in sorrow, arrange 

 for the absent one an " empty- 

 chair." It may be that some 

 of us will have to wipe away the starting tear as we 

 attempt to perform this last office for some missing 

 member of our own household. But there is a 

 larger family which concerns us most in our 

 editorial capacity, and, forgetful of personal friends 

 and ties of kindred, it becomes our duty to gaze 

 around that larger circle in which the bond of 

 kindred pursuits has united us, and ascertain for 

 whom it is that we must place the " empty chair." 



In recounting the losses which Natural Science 

 had sustained at the close of last year, we had to 

 grieve over a long array of names well known and 

 highly esteemed — the representatives of veterans 

 who had finished the fight and gone to their rest. 

 No. 24. 



4, < 3*Bf' 



On the present occasion the number is less ; and 

 we have to congratulate ourselves that in the fore- 

 most ranks of scientific men, in our own country at 

 least, death has been less busy than in the preceding 

 year. There are, nevertheless, two or three whom 

 we cannot fail to remember ; aud for them we may,, 

 in imagination, place the " empty chair." 



On the 15th of May Dr. W. H. Harvey, the 

 eminent authority on seaweeds, finished his career 

 at Taunton. "From a very early period he mani- 

 fested an ardent love of plants ; and the fact of his 

 father's family frequently spending a portion of the 

 summer at the seaside, generally at Miltown Malbay, 

 on the coast of Clare, Ireland, afforded him great 

 opportunity for the indulgence of his taste for 

 natural history. This bold and picturesque coast, 

 open to the mighty roll of the Atlantic, abounded in 

 those marine plants which in after life became his 

 special study." * At first he pursued almost simul- 

 taneously the study of seaweeds, mosses, insects, 

 and shells. Whilst still a youth, he discovered a 

 new freshwater shell in the mountains of Killarney 

 aud a habitat for the rare little moss, Hookeria Icete- 

 virens. The latter circumstance brought hirn into 

 correspondence with the late Sir William Hooker ; 

 and encouraged by that lamented botanist, he 

 devoted himself thenceforth almost exclusively to 

 the study of plants. A government appointment at 

 the Cape of Good Hope in 1836 enabled him to 

 prepare himself on the spot for a work on the 

 " Genera of South African Plants ; " and on his 

 return to England he ultimately became Professor 

 of Botany in the Royal Dublin Society, an office 

 which he continued to hold till his death. In 18-10 

 he visited the United States and Canada, and in 

 1853 Ceylon and Australia; and in 1856 was 



* Gardener's Chronicle, June p, 1868. 



N 



