LINNEAN SOOIEXr OF LOJ^JDON. 97 



and in their report they stated that whatever names were 

 attached to the plants " have been furnished by Mr. Smith, the 

 foreman, and that the Director does not hold himself responsible 

 for tliem." At this time it was the practice to attach nnnibers 

 to the plants, and the corresponding names were recorded in a 

 book, kept privately by the younger Alton, tiie gardeners them- 

 selves not knowing the names of the subjects under their charge, 

 Mr. Smith was a witness at the famous trial of Robert Sweet, 

 regarding the theft of a plant from Kew ; the counsel and bench 

 could not believe that a particular spt-cimen could possibly be 

 sworn to, and Sweet was acquitted, to the public satisfaction, the 

 seclusion of the gardens from all save a section of the community 

 being widely resented. 



In 1841 the control of the gardens was transferred to the 

 Commissioners of Woods and Forests, Sir Wm. J. Hooker was 

 appointed the Director, with Smith as Curator, and the establish- 

 ment began its career of scientific usefulness. By 1846 the 

 collection of fei-ns had increased from 80 to 400, in 1857 to 600, 

 and by 1866, when Sir Wm. Hooker died, to a thousand species 

 and well-marked varieties. Many of these had been raised from 

 spores taken from herbarium specimens. In 1838 Smith had read 

 a paper before the Linnean Society on Ergot ; and in 1839 had 

 published his genus Caelehogyne in our Transactions, with a 

 plate. In 1841 he described Cuming's splendid collection of 

 ferns from the Philippine Islands in Hooker's Journal, vol. iii., 

 shortly followed by his scheme of fern-classification in the fourth 

 volume of the same journal, and in Hooker's ' London Journal,' 

 vols, i., ii., which had been previously read at one of our meet- 

 ings. Seemanu's Ferns of the ' Herald ' voyage were worked up 

 by him, and issued in 1856. During 1861 his eyesight began 

 to fail, and in 1863 he retired upon a pension, the old in- 

 justice of inadequate salary during Alton's time having long 

 since been made good, and was succeeded by another Curator 

 of the same name. Three years later his collection of dried ferns 

 of 2000 species on 6000 sheets was bought for the British Mu- 

 seum. His wife died in 1838, and his six children died one after 

 another by consumption, the last in 1871, one of them, Alexander, 

 having held positions in the Museum and Herbarium at Kew. 

 The tombstone, with its pathetic record of successive losses, stands 

 at the extreme soutli-east corner of Kew Churchyard. 



Mr. Smith did not permit his blindness to hinder his labours 

 in his retirement, his memory was well stored and retentive, and 

 was unimpaired to the last. He lived in lodgings at Kew, and 

 employed a young lady secretary t^ix hours a day reading to him 

 and writing from his dictation. In the ' Gardener's Chronicle ' 

 he published from time to time anecdotes of old Kew times or 

 short notices of his early contemporaries, who were employed at 

 Kew or collected for that garden. The principal books written 

 during this closing period were ' Fern;;, British and Foreign,' in 



LINN, SOC. PliOCEEDINQS. — SESSION 1887-88. h 



