350 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
first case of growing plants sent to New York thirty-five years 
ago, which arrived as fresh and healthy as when they left 
London; and the transmission was quite successful between 
England and Australia, when the voyage, confined to sailing- 
ships, was far longer than now. So useful has this contriy- 
ance proved to be in this respect, that the director of Kew 
Gardens “feels safe in saying that a large proportion of the 
most valuable economic and other tropical plants now culti- 
vated in England would, but for these cases, not yet have 
been introduced.” The earliest published account of the War- 
dian case was given by Mr. Ward in the form of a letter to 
his near friend, the late Sir William Hooker, and was printed 
in the “ Companion to the Botanical Magazine” for May, 
1836. His volume “On the Growth of Plants in Closely 
Glazed Cases” appeared in the year 1842, and a second edi- 
tion, considerably enlarged and suitably illustrated, was pub- 
lished a few years later. These were, we believe, Mr. Ward’s 
only scientific publications, excepting reports of communica- 
tions to various societies with which he was connected, several 
of them relating to a subject near to his heart: the improve- 
ment of the dwellings of the poor in England, and the amel- 
ioration, in other respects, of their hard condition. A most 
enthusiastic and, in some departments, a learned botanist, his 
contributions to his favorite avocation were not in the form of 
authorship, to which he seemed averse: a man “ given to hos- 
pitality ” indeed, but as unpretending as it was cordial and 
unlimited. The coming generation will hardly appreciate the 
extent of the influence he exerted and the strength of the 
attachment he inspired so widely among the cultivators of 
natural science, nor understand, perhaps, how it could be 
said of him, and without exaggeration, that “for very many 
years his hospitable house, first in Wellclose Square, and lat- 
terly at Clapham Rise, was the most frequented metropolitan 
resort of naturalists from all quarters of the globe of any 
since Sir Joseph Banks’ day.” But while any survive of those 
who have had the privilege of knowing him personally, or in 
the friendly correspondence he delighted in, Mr. Ward will 
be remembered as “ one of the gentlest, kindest, and purest,” 
and in the highest sense one of the best of men. 
