BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF WM. HEMY HARVEY, OF DUBLIN. 



By Professor Asa Gray, of Harvard College. 



[This biograpliy is republished from the American Journal of Science and 

 Arts as a tribute to the memory of a most valued collaborator of the Smithsonian 

 Institution. — J. H.] 



William Henry Harvey, whose lamented death was announced in the last 

 number of this journal, (p. 129,) was born at Sumraerville, near Limerick, Ire- 

 land, on the 5th of February, 1811. His father, Joseph ]\[. Harvey, was a highly 

 respected merchant in that city, and a member of the Society of Friends. Wiliiam 

 Henry was, we believe, the youngest of several childi'en. He received a good 

 education at Ballitore school, an institution of the Friends, and on leaving it was 

 engaged for a time in his father's counting-room, devoting, however, all his spare 

 time to natural history, his favorite pursuit even from boyhood. He made con- 

 siderable attainments in entomology and concliology, and in botany he early 

 turned his attention to mosses and algcc. To the study of the latter, in which 

 he became pre-eminent, he was attracted from the first b}^ the opportunities which 

 he enjo^'fd on the productive western coast of Ireland, the family usually spend- 

 ing a good part of the summer at the seaside, mostly on the bold and picturesque 

 shore of Clare. As the late Sir William Hooker's bent for botany was fixed by 

 his accidental discovery of a rare moss, which he took to Sir J. E. Smith, so in 

 turn was Hai'vey's, by his discovery of two new habitats of another rare moss, 

 the Hookcria Icctevirens, which led to a correspondence with Hooker, and to a 

 life-long mutual attachment of these most excellent men. Encouraged by his 

 illustrious friend and patron, Harvey sought some position in which he might 

 devote himself to science ; and it would appear was selected by Mr. Spring Rice 

 (the late Lord Monteagie) for the post of colonial treasurer at the Cape of Good 

 Hope ; that by some accident the appointment was made out in the name of an 

 elder brother, and an inopportune change of ministry frustrated all attempts at 

 rectification. There was no other way but for the brother to accept the under- 

 signed appointment, and take the young botanist with him to the Cape as his 

 assistant. This was done, and the brothers sailed for that colony in the year 

 ^1835. But the health of the elder brother suddenly and hopelessly failed within 

 a year, and he died in 1S3G on the passage home. William Harvey's appoint- 

 ment to succeed his brother had been sent to the Cape while he was on his home- 

 Avard voyage ; he immediately returned to his post and fulfilled its duties for 

 three years, devoting his mornings to collecting and his nights to botanical inves- 

 tigation, with such assiduity that his health also gave way, and he was compelled 

 to return home in 1839. The summer of the next year found him re-established 

 and on his way to the Cape for the third time. But he could not long endure 

 the sultry climate and the intense application ; with broken health he came back 

 in 1841 and gave up the appointment. 



After two years of prostration and seclusion he was well again; and in 1814, 

 on the death of Dr. Coulter, he was appointed keeper of the herbarium of Trinity 

 College, Dublin. The most important portion of the herbarium then consisted 

 of the collections, yet unassorted, made by Coulter in northwestern Mexico and 

 California. Harvey generously added his own large collections, for which he 

 was allowed fifty pounds a year in addition to a slender salary, and he proceeded 

 to build up the herbarium into a first-class establishment. The professorship of 



