3rl#- Obituary : — Mr. George Caley. 



amounted to a passion ; and it is quite surprising how a man with his slen- 

 der means could amass such a library, and yet discharge every debt he had 

 in the world: indeed, reading now became his only solace. The accounts 

 of voyages and travels enabled him to fight his own battles over again ; and 

 he could always, he used to say, identify himself with his hero in his di- 

 lemmas. He knew what it was to be hungered and athirst, to be drenched 

 and to be naked, and to spend day after day face to face with death. Yet, 

 after all, it was the mode of life he delighted in ; and, if he had had his will, 

 he would have returned to be a child of the woods again. Though a 

 matter-of-fact man, he was not without imagination, as his modes of ex- 

 pression would often testify. His residence in the West Indies had mate- 

 rially impaired his constitution; and he attributed the complaint which was 

 the cause of his death to an accident he had sustained there. It was a long 

 time before his friends could induce him to call in medical assistance ; and 

 he had, perhaps, relied too much on his own judgment in treating a disease 

 which baffled the skill of his very friendly physician. For six long months 

 he suifered under most excruciating pain, yet he bore it with exemplary for- 

 titude ; and, instead of seeking relief by dilating upon his own unhappy con- 

 dition, he took every opportunity to turn to topics in which he knew his 

 friendly visitors took a deep interest with himself; and absolutely, while 

 bedridden, and unable to move himself, set about to correct the errors re- 

 specting certain English plants. It may be worth while to record one of 

 them as a memento of this extraordinary person. In one of his walks 

 around Ingleborough, he had gathered in abundance a JYieracium entirely 

 new to him. He showed it to Dr. Withering, who knew nothing of it, 

 and it was agreed to refer it to Mr. Dickson. It was pronounced, very 

 hesitatingly, by " Jemmy," as this lynx-eyed botanist was called among 

 his familiars, to be H. villosum, and it was so published in the 3d edition 

 of Dr. Withering ; yet Mr. Caley stated that Dickson had very slender 

 ground for his opinion ; and that he was wrong, was shown by the plant 

 turning out to be something else in the following season. As far, there- 

 fore, as Withering is concerned, ^ieracium villosum must be excluded from 

 the British Flora. 



Although he cheated pain by these little diversions, his strength gradually 

 failed. He felt, and often repeated, that he knew he should die ; and he 

 requested the writer of this to assist him in arranging his little worldly 

 affairs. His first desire was to provide for one who had faithfully attended 

 upon him in his sickness ; and his second was to repair, all he could, the 

 injury he thought he had done to a poor bird which he had caught in the 

 woods of New Holland, and had deprived of liberty for twenty years. He 

 therefore charges certain persons, who were to be benefited by his pro- 

 perty, with the care of his cockatoo. He then bequeaths his freedom to a 

 negro he possessed in the West Indies ; and lastly, gives the residue to his 

 nearest relations.* These are slight traits of character, but they mark a 

 nobleness of mind which will for ever distinguish the possessor from the 

 common herd of mankind. If poor Caley had had only the pocket of a beg- 

 gar, he would have acted with the honour of a prince. 



His strength now declined daily, and this declension was succeeded by 

 an abatement of his pain ; until at length he was unable to converse, and 

 death came as a welcome messenger to release him from life. He lies 

 buried in the burial-ground belonging to St. George's, Hanover Square, 

 near Connaught Place, with another New Holland traveller, Captain 

 Flinders. — (£/• 



* He had been married in 1816; but his wife was dead, and he left no 

 children. 



