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OBITUARY. 



We regret to announce the departure from this life of Thomas Andkew Knight, 

 Esq., of Downton Castle, Herefordshire. Our notice of this gentleman is extracted 

 from an article written, as Mr. Loudon justly observes, in an excellent spirit, by 

 Dr. Lindley, and published in The Athenceum. 



Mr. Knight was born at Wormsley Grange, near Hereford, Oct. 10, 1758, 

 being the youngest son of a clergyman of the Church of England, whose father 

 had amassed a large fortune in the iron trade. He lost his father early, was sent 

 to school at nine years of age, and afterwards entered Baliol College, Oxford. 

 He soon showed great powers of observation and reflection ; and acquired his first 

 love of botanical science in the idle days previous to his entrance at Ludlow 

 school. We follow Dr. Lindley in calling them "idle"; though possibly, had 

 his active mind been early vitiated by ordinary scholastic training, it might have 

 been depressed beyond the power of subsequent good management. In 1795 

 Mr. Knight began to be publicly known as a vegetable physiologist. " The 

 great object which he set before himself, and which he pursued through his long 

 life with undeviating steadiness of purpose, was utility. Mere curious specula- 

 tions seem to have engaged his attention but little." He accordingly studied to 

 improve, by his indefatigable scientific researches, the various kinds of fruits and 

 vegetables used at table, an object in which his labours have been crowned with 

 perfect success ; " and if henceforward the English yeoman can command the 

 garden luxuries that were once confined to the great and wealthy, it is to Mr. 

 Knight, far more than to any other person, that the gratitude of the country is 

 due." In social life he was full of benevolence, and his loss will be severely felt, 

 not only by his family, but by his numerous tenantry and dependents ; and he 

 bore with philosophic resignation one of the severest of trials — the loss of an only 

 and much-beloved son. "His political opinions were as free from prejudice as 

 his scientific views ; his whole heart was with the Liberal party, of which he was 

 all his life a strenuous supporter. — It is no exaggeration to add, that no living 

 Man now before the world can be said to rank with him in that particular branch 

 of science to which his whole life was devoted." 



Mr. Knight's services to various scientific Societies are well known. He con- 

 tributed to them several valuable papers, and suceeeded his friend Sir Joseph 

 Banks in the presidency of the Horticultural Society. — He died in London, at 

 the house of Mrs. Walpole, one of his daughters, after a short illness, on the 11th 

 of May, 1838, in the 80th year of his age. 



