308 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
to accept the undesigned appointment, and to 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 1836 on the passage home. 
William Harvey’s appointment to succeed his brother had 
been sent to the Cape while he was on his homeward voyage : 
he immediately returned to his post, and fulfilled its duties for 
three years, devoting his mornings to collecting and his nights 
to botanical investigation, 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 reéstablished 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 1844, on the death of Dr. Coulter, he was ap- 
pointed 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 north- 
western 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 pro- 
ceeded to build up the herbarium into a first-class estab- 
lishment. The professorship of botany in the college, which 
was pretty well endowed, fell vacant about this time; and the 
college authorities, wishing to elect Harvey to the chair and 
so to combine the two offices, conferred upon him the neces- 
sary degree of M. D. But it was contended that an honorary 
degree did not meet the requirements, and so Dr. Allman, the 
present distinguished professor of natural history at Edin- 
burgh, carried the election. 
Except for the slenderness of his salary, Dr. Harvey was 
now well placed for scientific work, the object to which he 
wished to devote his life; and he entered upon and pursued 
his distinguished career henceforth with an entire and well- 
directed energy that never flagged until he was prostrated by 
mortal disease. 
