54 PEOCEEDINGS OP THE 



Botanic and horticultural science are the poorer by the 

 unexpected death on 30th May, 1907, of Maxwell Tylden 

 Masters, M.D., F.R.S. He was born at Canterbury on 15th 

 April, 1833, the youngest son of Alderman Masters, a nurseryman 

 who effected some noteworthy hybridisations. Young Masters 

 studied medicine at King's College Hospital, London, was 

 admitted Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1854, and 

 two years later became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 He was sub-curator of the Fielding Herbarium at Oxford for 

 a short time, and then for some years he practised as a general 

 practitioner at Peckham, taking his degree of M.D. at St. Andrews ; 

 he was Lecturer on Botany at St. George's Hospital from 1855 

 to 1863, and was for some time an Examiner in Botany in the 

 University of London, and to the Civil Service. 



Dr. John Lindley, the founder and first editor of the 

 * Gardeners' Chronicle,' after a few years of failing health, died 

 1st November, 1865, and Dr. Masters was appointed joint-editor 

 with Thomas Moore, the Curator of the Physick Garden at 

 Chelsea. Our late Fellow once told the present writer, that 

 although the stipend he received on entering upon this new 

 post was no more than he had been earning at Peckham, yet 

 the feeling of its certainty gave a relief to his mind, which he 

 characterised as indescribable. In 1882 Moore retired, and Dr. 

 Masters remained sole editor till his death. 



He gave the best of his powers to his editorial duties, and 

 those who knew his style, could recognise many unsigned articles 

 in his journal, as well as those signed or initialled by him, yet 

 he found time to write independent volumes, and to take part 

 in serial publications, as the ' Flora of Tropical Africa,' and the 

 ' Flora of British India.' In 1866, he was Congress Secretary 

 for the London International Exhibition of 1866 of Horticulture 

 and Botany, which was additionally noteworthy for the promul- 

 gation of the laws of nomenclature, largely due to the drafting of 

 Alphouse de Candolle. The Exhibition ended in a profit of £30u0, 

 and the Report by Dr. Masters bears testimony to the care with 

 which the details were worked out. The newly installed editor 

 profited immensely by this experience, for it introduced him to 

 many foreign cori'espondents of distinction. 



As an independent author, his first essays seem to have 

 been printed in the third volume of the Ashmolean Society's 

 ' Transactions,' 1854, etc., while he was at the Oxford Botanic 

 Garden. In 1860 an abstract was issued in the * Proceedings ' 

 of the Royal Institution, " On the relation between the abnormal 

 and normal functions"!^in plants," followed by " Vegetable Morph- 

 ology," in the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, 

 for 1862. These seem to have confirmed him in the study of 

 abnormalities, resulting in his ' Vegetable Teratology ' published 

 by the Ray Society in 1869, and long out of print ; the author 

 never had leisure sufficient to revise or recast the work, but 



