38 
natural hybrid Oak trees which he believed could be found within 
a few miles of that place. It is needless to add that the two 
pe were duly found and photographed on the very day following 
that of arrival! This is not the place to describe the great book 
in detail or enlarge on what it has meant for arboriculturists 
generally. Its scientific accuracy, expressed in plain, straight- 
forward and admirable English, has given an incalculable impetus 
to forestry and arboriculture in this country, and has inspired 
with enthusiasm everyone fortunate enough to possess it. Elwes 
indeed, had a ready pen, and was master of an easy, vigorous 
style rarely surpassed in botanical literature. No slip-shod 
statement of fact or hearsay evidence would satisfy Elwes’ 
critical faculties ; indeed, there are some who think he at times 
expressed his dissent with needless emphasis. He had little 
knowledge of the arts of compromise or how to agree with his 
adversary in the way. When in pursuit of a subject he some- 
times urged his views on his hearer without giving him an oppor- 
tunity to express his own, a failing not uncommon in those of 
masterful intellect in whom the sense of humour is, perhaps, 
somewhat deficient. He had difficulty in realising the point of 
view of others; no one was more ready to acknowledge their 
achievements in his publications, but the judgments he expressed 
of the character of men, or the merits of plants, were sometimes 
precipitate and prejudiced. A charming characteristic was his 
readiness to admit when he was wrong, and he combined a 
chivalrous courtesy with a self-assertiveness which those who 
did not know him well were apt to misjudge. It was only when 
one had got to know him thoroughly that one appreciated the 
real charm and lovableness of his character. No sketch of 
Elwes’ life should omit mention of his amazing powers of assimila- 
tion of knowledge and of his prodigious memory. He seemed 
to absorb information through his faculties of vision—both 
of books and of things—rather than by listening to the spoken 
word. 
As a West Country squire the handsome, burly figure of 
Elwes was well known, in the hunting field and elsewhere, among 
his more stay-at-home neighbours. His estate of Colesborne in 
the Cotswolds is, unfortunately, situated for the most part on 
the cold oolitic formation of that district, and he deplored, as 
indeed we all may, that he possessed no acres of green-sand or 
old red sandstone on which to make his plantations and pinetum. 
In a frosty valley near his house he formed a “ Centenary 
Plantation ’’ of trees of many species grown from seed collected 
mostly in this country in 1900, a year remarkable for the ripening 
of tree seeds of all kinds. Here careful temperature and other 
results, and he was as much interested in, and as careful: to 
point out, the failures as the successes, Truth to tell, #8 former 
were almost as numerous as the latter. In his garden, however, 
