5 2 PROCEEDINGS OF TOE 



KoBERT Allex Rolkk. Oil April ISlh of the present year 

 Kobert Allen RoH'e, an Associate of the Society for \i(') years, was 

 laid to rest in ]{icliiuoiid Cemetery under a pall of glorious 

 orchids, — the last and fair tribute of the great establishment he 

 had served, and of tlie friends who were uuitftd witli him in the 

 cult of that noble family. AVith him a hard and earnest worker, 

 driven by a deep and unwavering enthusiasm that amounted 

 almost to a religion, has gone from us. Neither endowed with 

 the liberal education and the broad outlook of a Lindley nor with 

 the domineering self-sure personality of a Keiclienliach, he has 

 yet, from a comparatively moderate position jind constrained by a 

 multitude of divergent duties, created for himself a world-wide 

 reputation as an orchidologist whose loss will be felt for a long 

 time. 



He was born at Ruddington, a small vilhige near Nottingham, 

 on JNIay 12th, 1855. He was brought up as a gardener, and was 

 for some time employed in the gardens in AV'elbeck Abbey, the 

 seat of the Duke of Portland. It was from there that he came to 

 Kew in 1S79 ; but already in the following year he aa as appointed 

 an assistant in the Herbarium, winning the post in a competitive 

 examination against eight other candidates. He « as early brought 

 into contact w ith the Orchidaceae, and his first publication in that 

 direction was a " Revision of the Genus rJialo'nopsis" in the 

 'Gardeners' Chronicle' of 1886 (vol. xxvi.). Other papers and 

 notes on orchids followed in the next years, but it was not until 

 1893, the year when lie founded the ' Oirhid Review,' that he 

 concentrated his efforts on the Orchidaceas. The ' Orchid Review,' 

 the special organ of the Orchid growers, remained his faithful 

 ward and companion to the end of his life, whilst the more 

 exclusively scientific results of his studies in Orchidaceae are 

 spread over various journals and the two great floras of Tropical 

 Africa and South Africa (' Flora Capensis '). The Linnean Society 

 especially owes him a paper on the genus Vanilla (Journ. vol. xxxi. 

 1896, pp. 439-478) and the section of the Orchidaceae of the 

 'Index JFlorae Sinensis' (Journ. vol. xxxvi. 1903, pp. 5-67). The 

 numbers of new species of Orchidacese described by R. A. Rolfe 

 amounts to many hundreds, the 'Kew Bulletin' alone being 

 responsible for the publication of almost 500 under the title 

 " New- Orchids." His output does not rival in numbers the pro- 

 digious figures realised by Reichenbach and some modern authors, 

 but in thoroughness it compares well w ith any of them, and this 

 is ungrudgingly recognised in letters which have come to hand 

 since Rolfe's death from France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, 

 and America, \\hilst in his own country his authority was 

 unchallenged. However, the Orchidaceaj were not the only field 

 where he left his mark. In an institution like Kew no one can 

 specialize in any one branch to the exclusion of all others. The 

 demands on its workers are manifold and the opportunities end- 

 less. So found Rolfe himself, occupied with research work here 

 and there outside the domain of his favourite studies, partly in 



