LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 43 



College, Dublin, were celebrated for tlieir collections o£ curious 

 and rare plants ; whilst of private collections those of Dr. Patrick 

 Neill, of Canon Mills, Edinburgh, of Dean Herbert at Sj^of- 

 forth near Manchester, and Mr. Anderson Henry, were amongst 

 the best known at home and abroad. These kept up an active inter- 

 change of plants, and contributed largely to the earlier volumes 

 of the ' Botanical Magazine,' ' Register,' and other periodicals. 



Early in 1841 Mr. Anderson Henry was elected a Fellow of 

 the Caledonian Horticultural Society, then no unworth}^ rival of 

 the Eoyal Horticultural in the value of its labours. This pro- 

 bably gave that direction to his pursuits which lasted through 

 life, especially his passion for hybridizing and his attempts to 

 formulate the conditions required for the successful raising of 

 plants from seeds, cuttings, &c. In an early volume of that 

 Society's publications he contributed a paper on the neces- 

 sity of allowing the free access of air to the roots of growing 

 plants, illustrating this by cuttings struck in water the surface of 

 which was alternately exposed to the air or protected from it ; 

 and he proceeded to show the injurious effects of covering the 

 roots of trees by flagstones and other materials impervious to air. 

 It was not till late iu life that Mr. Anderson Henry published 

 any of the results of his experiments upon hybridization, being 

 incited thereto, we believe, through a correspondence with Mr. 

 Darwin. He had, however, for upwards of forty years been 

 actively engaged in crossing plants ; and it is characteristic of 

 his modesty and singleness of purpose that, whilst never obtru- 

 ding himself before the public as an experimenter, his methods 

 and the results of his labours were alike at the disposal of every 

 enquirer and cultivator, and were largely adopted by nurserymen 

 and practical gardeners, with whom his name was a household 

 word iu Scotland. To enumerate his successes and his no less 

 instructive failures would be out of place ; the former are in one 

 instance commemorated by the Veronica Andersonii, a hybrid 

 between two New-Zealand species, V. speciosa and V. salicifolia, 

 which has become one of the most popular of conservatory and 

 half-hardy plants, though of so old a date that few now connect its 

 name with that of the veteran who was the author of its being. 

 Other genera to which he devoted much attention, and in which 

 he was most successful, were Campanula, Clematis, Primula, and 

 especially Rhododendron, in which genus he was the first to 

 recognize tlie prepotency of the pollen of the short stamens in 

 each flower. Of his published papers on the subject of Hybri- 

 dization, the most important is that in the ninth volume of the 

 Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and which 

 has been highly appreciated by practical horticulturalists for its 

 suggestions and directions. 



As a successful raiser of rare plants from distant quarters of 

 the globe, Mr. Anderson Henry was latterly better known than 

 as a hybridizer ; and he was eminently fortunate in the choice of 

 localities wherein to encourage collectors. Of these there were 



LINN. SOC. PROCEEDINGS. SESSIOJ^f 1886-87. / 



