T. Martyn, H. Marshall Ward 253 



interesting Suffolk farmers in his parish in the application 

 of Botany to Agriculture was notable. He is renowned 

 not for any strikingly remarkable original contributions to 

 science, but for taking a leading part in reorganizing the 

 scientific spirit of Cambridge. 



The only other botanist of eminence connected with 

 Cambridge was Professor Marshall Ward (1854-1906). He was, 

 in a way, a successor of Berkeley, and although he always 

 was very nervous of the encroachment of what is known as 

 " technical research " on the purer kind, his own researches 

 were without exception of practical utilitarian value. Ward, 

 like Berkeley, was educated at Christ's College, and afterwards 

 studied in Germany. For a time he was teaching at Owens 

 College, Manchester, and later he was Professor of Botany 

 in the Forestry Department of the Royal Engineering College 

 at Cooper's Hill; he was appointed Professor at Cambridge 

 in the year 1895. One of his earliest researches involved a 

 visit to Ceylon, where he investigated the life-history of the 

 fungus that attacks the leaves of the coffee plant, which in 

 fact destroyed the coffee trade of that island. He worked 

 out the life-history of this pathogenic fungus, and was largely 

 instrumental in inducing the planters to take up the planting 

 of tea. 



Throughout his life Ward was largely occupied with the 

 study of bacteria and fungi, to which he contributed much 

 of first-rate importance. During his professorship the 

 present School of Botany was erected and equipped, and 

 at the time of its erection it was, and still is, second to none 

 in Great Britain in size and completeness of equipment. 



The history of Botany in Scotland and in Ireland 

 shows, as at first was the case in Cambridge and Oxford, no 

 particularly outstanding names. The University Chair in 

 Edinburgh was founded in 1695, and was first filled by James 

 Sutherland (1639-1719), who, in 1667, had succeeded in estab- 

 lishing and stocking a small botanic garden. At Glasgow, 

 from the year 1719, Botany no longer had a distinct professor, 

 the subject being taught by the Professor of Anatomy, a 

 separate Chair reappearing only in the year 1818. The first 

 occupant of this double chair was Thomas Brisbane, a man 

 who entertained so strong a dislike to dissection, that it is 



