Anniversary of 1837 » Address of the President, 277 



nera Crocus^ Dahlia^ and Chrysanthemum ; and he was also required 

 to re-write the greatest part of the communications which were ad- 

 dressed to the Society by gardeners and practical men, which were 

 rarely sent in a fit state for publication, but which frequently em- 

 bodied very important information on the various processes of hor- 

 ticulture. 



Mr. Sabine was likewise an active and valuable member of the 

 Zoological Society, whose gardens are chiefly indebted to his taste 

 and knowledge for the introduction and systematic arrangement of 

 those splendid flowers and shrubs which have added so greatly to 

 their beauty and interest. 



Mr. Sabine held, for the greatest part of his life, the situation of 

 Inspector-General of Taxes, and was called upon by his official du- 

 ties to make periodical visits to almost every part of the kingdom ; 

 he never omitted any opportunity which his various journeys afforded 

 him, of acquiring or of communicating practical knowledge of hor- 

 ticulture and of botany ; and few persons have contributed so much, 

 by their personal exertions, to add to the decorations of the cottage 

 and the park, to increase and improve the produce of our gardens, 

 and thus greatly to extend the sphere of the innocent enjoyments 

 and luxuries of all classes of society. 



The Rev. Dr. Joseph Hallett Batten was a native of Penzance in 

 Cornwall, and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 

 in 1801, after attaining very high academical honours. He was ap- 

 pointed Classical Professor at the East India College at Hayleybury 

 at the period of its first establishment, and became Principal of the 

 college upon the retirement of Dr. Henley, a situation which he con- 

 tinued to retain until within a month of his death. He was a man 

 of cultivated taste and of very extensive attainments, both in theo- 

 logy and general literature ; and in every way worthy, by his intel- 

 lectual powers and character, of presiding over an establishment 

 which has been so justly distinguished by the very eminent men who 

 have been, and now are, connected with it. 



Dr. John Johnstone was the sixth son of the celebrated Dr. James 

 Johnstone of Worcester, and received his education at Merton Col- 

 lege, Oxford. He was for upwards of forty years a very distin- 

 guished physician at Birmingham and its neighbourhood, and made 

 his first appearance as an author in a defence of his father's claim 

 to the first discovery of the disinfecting powers of muriatic acid gas, 

 which had been claimed by Dr. Carmichael Smyth. Though ear- 

 nestly attached to the study and practice of his profession, he re- 

 tained throughout life a fondness for classical literature, and lived 

 on the most intimate terms with some of the most distinguished 

 scholars of the age, including amongst their number the justly cele- 

 brated Dr. Parr, whose life and voluminous correspondence he pub- 

 lished, a work full of interesting literary anecdote and classical re- 

 search; and his Harveian oration, pronounced in 1819, and which 

 has been recently published, with a short memoir of his life, by his 

 friend the Bishop of Lichfield, is a model of spirited and correct 

 Latinity. Dr. Johnstone was a man of very warm affections and of 



