31^ Miscellaneous, 



literature ; and it is to be feared that these unintcrmittcd exer- 

 tions in the cause of science must have been one of the causes 

 of the melancholy catastrophe which we now deplore, as he was 

 suddenly attacked by an effusion on the brain, which closed his 

 life after only four days' illness. 



It is almost unnecessary for us to dwell upon the scientific 

 merits of Professor Henfrey ; his claim to occupy a place in the 

 first rank of botanists has long been undisputed, and the amount 

 of work which he found time to perform is perfectly marvellous. 

 Whilst constantly engaged in the personal investigation of the 

 structure and physiology of plants, and in preparing the original 

 papers in which his observations were communicated to the 

 world, and which appeared in the pages of this Journal, in the 

 ' Transactions' of the Royal and Linnean Societies, the ^Journal of 

 the Agricultural Society,' &c., his untiring industry also enabled 

 him not only to furnish numerous translations and abstracts of 

 foreign memoirs to the Natural History Journals, and to review 

 many botanical works in the pages of the same periodicals and of 

 the 'Quarterly Review,' but also to translate several distinct works, 

 both from the German and French languages, and to write some 

 excellent elementary works on botanical subjects, of which his 

 'Elementary Course of Botany,' published in 1857, is the last 

 and most important. For three years also he was editor of the 

 ' Journal of the Photographic Society ;' and since the commence- 

 ment of the new series of the 'Annals,' in 1858, he has been 

 one of its most active editors. " Nor must the deep research and 

 critical acumen displayed in the articles which he wrote in the 

 ' Micrographic Dictionary ' be forgotten, the last sheets of a 

 second edition of which he had forwarded to the printer a few 

 days before his decease. 



With all this pressure of almost incessant toil upon his hands, 

 with health which necessitated the greatest care at all times and 

 often laid him for days upon a bed of sickness, the uniform 

 kindness and gentleness of his disposition was never for a 

 moment obscured ; and while the vast stores of his knowledge, 

 always freely offered for the instruction of his friends, must of 

 themselves have generated a respect for him in the minds of all 

 who came in contact with him, his friends alone could fully know 

 the extreme amiability of character which coexisted in him with 

 the highest intellectual powers and the most unwearying energy. 

 The kindhness and charity which pervaded his whole nature, his 

 true spirit, and his cheerful and unassuming manners, endeared 

 him to all who knew him well ; and his melancholy and un- 

 timely death leaves them the painful consciousness that his loss 

 creates a vacancy which, to them, can never be supplied. 



