MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 141 



expired on Friday last, alter a short illness, at the house of his daughter- 

 in-law, in Upper Seymour-street, at the advanced age of seventy-nine. He 

 arrived in London on the evening of the 30th of April, in a tolerable state 

 of health, for the purpose of attending the anniversary meeting of the Horti- 

 cultural Society, on the following day, on which occasion he has, with very 

 few exceptions presided, since his first becoming President in 1811; but the 

 fatigues of the journey, combined with the debility consequent upon his ad- 

 vanced years, prevented his attendance. It was generally remarked by 

 those who had the opportunity of seeing him at the preceding anniversary, 

 that that occasion would bs his last; a prediction which has been too truly 

 realized, for the Society of which he was the distinguished head. In their 

 President, the Horticultural Society has lost the principal, if not the sole tie 

 which attached them to the republic of science, and have probably met a 

 loss they can never compensate. 



In the future ill-assorted mass which compose their transactions, the hand 

 of the master will be no longer recognized, and death has struck a blow 

 that will do more to annihilate the sophistry and imbecility of their manage- 

 ment than any other event that could possibly have happened. 



Mr. Knight was born at Wormeley Grange, in Herefordshire, in 1759. 

 His father, be it observed, was a man of much learning and acquirements. 

 Having great power of mind, and living in an extremely quiet and seques- 

 tered spot, he was supposed by his ignorant neighbours, in their language, 

 " to know every thing. '' He died at an advanced age, when Mr. Knight was 

 an infant; an evidence of the respect his knowledge obtained him, whenever 

 his son sought to know in childhood, for any unusual subject, he was told, 

 " that his father would have answered him, but that nobody else could." 

 Being born in the midst of orchards, he observes, " I was early led to ask 

 whence the varieties of fruit I saw, came, and how they were produced. I 

 could obtain no satisfactory answer, and was thence led first to commence 

 experiments, in which, through a long life of scarcely interrupted health, I 

 have persevered, and probably shall persevere, as long as I shall have the 

 power." 



Mr. Johnson, the author of a work on English Gardening, published in 

 1829, thus sums the character of this individual: — '* If the question was put 

 to me, who is the most scientific horticulturist now living? who unites to a 

 knowledge of the practices of gardening, the most perfect knowledge of the 

 sciences that assists it? which of living horticulturists have conferred the 

 greatest benefits upon our art ? I should quote Mr. Knight, in reply to them 

 all. Whether we follow him in his researches as a physiologist, in his lu- 

 minous observations and discoveries respecting the sap of .plants; as a 

 general cultivator in the numerous papers in every branch of horticulture 

 in the transactions of the Society of which he is President, and especially 

 in the raising of improved fruits and culinary esculents, we find in all, the 

 most ample juitfication for our opinion, that he is the first floriculturist of our 

 times. Nor is he eminent alone in the higher walks of horticulture, lor at 

 Downton Hall, he demonstrates that he is capable of securing the correct 

 performance of every detail of gardening." 



Mr. Knight was one of the earliest promoters of the Horticultural Society, 

 his name being inserted in the charter of incorporation first granted to that 

 body. On the death of Lord Dartmouth, the first President, in 181 1, he was 

 elected to fill that office, which he held to the period of his decease. Until 

 even the latter period of his life, he was a constant, and almost the univer- 

 sal contributor to the transactions of the Society, whose death will prove 

 a great chasm. Although distinguished particularly for his attention to 

 fruits, he, was well versed in every department of horticulture ; and if his 

 researches in vegetable physiology have not tended much to the improve- 

 ment in that art, they show proofs of enlarged thought. His fortune wax 

 not princely, but his gifts to the promotion of science, were munificent, and 



