WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY. 
Wiri1am Henry Harvey was born at Summerville, near 
Limerick, Ireland, on the 5th of February, 1811. His father, 
Joseph M. Harvey, was a highly respected merchant in that 
city and a member of the Society of Friends. William Henry 
was, we believe, the youngest of several children. He received 
a good education at Ballitore school, — an institution of the 
Friends, — and on leaving it was engaged for a time in his fa- 
ther’s counting-room, devoting, however, all his spare time to 
natural history, his favorite pursuit even from boyhood. He 
made considerable attainments in entomology and conchology, 
and in botany he early turned his attention to Mosses and 
Alga. To the study of the latter, in which he became pre- 
eminent, he was attracted from the first by the opportunities 
which he enjoyed on the productive western coast of Ireland, 
the family usually spending 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 Harvey’s, by his discovery of 
two new habitats of another rare moss, the Hookeria leete- 
virens, 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 sci- 
ence; and it would appear was selected by Mr. Spring Rice 
(the late Lord Monteagle) 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 
1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xlii. 273. (1866.) 
