After 1889 Collett's hands were pretty full of serious military 

 and administrative duties. I heard nothing from him till after 

 his retirement in 1893. Even then it is an open secret that high 

 professional advancement was still within his reach. But he had 

 begun to be afflicted with deafness, and as he told me in after 

 years he thought no one with that infirmity was justified in 

 assuming high military command. 



He eventually settled in London, and it must have been early 

 in 1895 that he came to consult me about his projected " Flora of 

 Simla." He had a good practical knowledge of it in the field, 

 and his first idea was that he might make a sort of rough draft 

 and that some member of my staff might put it into a proper 

 technical shape. I pointed out to him that such a collaboration 

 would be in no way satisfactory, that the merit of the book would 

 be the personal impress that he would give to it himself, and that 

 I should not be inclined to aid the undertaking unless he under- 

 took it single-handed, Collett pleaded his want of technical 

 knowledge, but the real obstacle was only his excessive modesty. 

 He was a little shy of coming to work amongst us with only the 

 equipment of the amateur, and though possessed of indomitable 

 pluck was diffident as to the result. I assured him that it was 

 unfamiliar 

 ' weeks, but 

 ry facility and that he 

 vould then feel a new interest in the prosecution of his work. 

 : promised him that his path should be smoothed by the willing 

 issistance of my staff, and he agreed with some demur to make 

 he attempt. I call to mind no similar case of a man late in life, 



was abundantly justified. Collett stuck to his task with bulldog 

 tenacity occasionally relieved by a groan. But he soon mastered 

 his difficulties and became the severest critic of his own work, the 

 early portions of which he entirely rewrote. For several succeed- 

 ing years he worked at Kew with. the greatest regularity, spending 

 the best part of the day in the Herbarium and ending with a 

 walk in the gardens, Avhere I was often amused to find that the 

 habit of the old Quarter-Master General had not been lost and 

 that nothing escaped his observant eye. 



Some failure of his health probably took place, though so 

 imperceptibly as to escape observation. The old military fire 

 Avas roused by the outbreak of the South African war, which he 

 followed with absorbing attention. His first estimates of its 

 course were extravagantly optimistic, to be followed by others 

 equally pessimistic. With no military knowledge but some 

 conception of the conditions, I ventured to differ from him in 

 both respects. But the war weighed heavily on him, and he 

 told me he could not sleep at night for thinking of it and its 

 consequences. He had, however, almost completed the manuscript 

 of his book, and commenced printing. He then took a holiday in 

 Ireland with Mr. Gamble. It is possible that he over-fatigued 

 himself. On his return he had some kind of sudden seizure, and 

 for some time he was in a precarious state, but slowly recovered. 

 He then came to see me at Kew, and thongh he was obviously 

 verj' much broken I did not feel any immediate anxiety about 



