XXIV CHARLES CARDALE BABINGTON. 



trove discussed. But for Babington, I make bold to assert, tbe 

 Society would never have formed a Museum, and must, in all 

 likelihood, have crumbled to pieces. Now that through the zeal 

 of S. S. Lewis 2^ our numbers are large, we should recover and 

 carry out the platform of a " Cambridge Historical Society," 

 which proposed all that the Oxford Historical Society is doing, 

 but fell stillborn, blasted by chilling frowns, somewhere in 

 the fifties. 



In the Report presented to the Society at its fifty-fifth 

 Annual Meeting, May 29, 1895, we read (he also — I am glad 

 to add — was able to read before his last seizure) — 



The long services of Charles Cardale Babington, M.A., F.R.S., P.S.A., 

 Professor of Botany, one of the founders of the Society, and for many years 

 its most active supporter, appear to the Council to demand some special 

 recognition. In accordance with the Laws, Professor Babington's term of 

 office as Vice-President terminates to-day. The Council propose therefore 

 that he be asked to accept the permanent post of Honorary Vice-President of 

 the Society. 



He had the rare gift, ripened by use, of bringing to light 

 buried talents, and would spare no pains in clearing for them a 

 fair field. In the year 1854 he beckoned Mr. Robert Cooper 

 Ready j^*' thee struggling for a living at Lowestoft, to Cambridge. 

 I took him to our treasury, when in quest of college seals. 

 Ready has since, at the British Museum, with the aid of his 

 sons, outstript the boldest forecast, charming into shapes of 

 bygone life beaten bronze — the Balawat gate ornaments — from 

 Babylon, to lay eyes warped past hope in the devouring fire. 



Babington's assistant, Thomas Hughes Corry'-^^ (1st cl. Nat. 

 Sc. 1882, drowned 9 Aug. 1883), revered in him a father. So 

 too Jani Alii, the Mohammedan missionary to the Crescent 

 (C.C., B.A. 1877, M.A. 1883), looked to Brookside as his home. 

 After Alli's death (15 Oct. 1894)^8 his Bible, Prayer-book, and 

 gold watch were sent back to those who would cherish them 

 more than any one on earth. Wherever Babington went, he 

 fell in with homebred votaries of Nature who could give and 

 take. So in Connemara with " Mac Calla." 



His name for active kindness threw countless chances in his 

 way. This year (1895) a voice of gratitude reached him from 

 a freeholder in Manitoba. A boy, beaten and starved by a 



