316 Obituary JVoiicc 



vented his attendance. Ii was generally remarked by those who had 

 the opportunity of seeing him at the preceding anniversary, that that 

 occasion would be his last; a prediction which has been too truly real- 

 ized, for the society of which he was so long the distinguished head. 

 In their president, the Horticultural Society has lost the jjrincipal if not 

 the sole tie which attached them to the republic of science, and have 

 probably met a loss they can never com|)ensate. In the future ill-as- 

 sorted 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 management, 

 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 neighbors, in their language, 

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

 was an infant; and, as an evidence of the respect his knowledge ob- 

 tained him, whenever his son sought, in childhood, for information up- 

 on any unusual subject, he was told " that his father would have an- 

 swered 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 sat- 

 isfactory answer, and was thence led first to commence experiments, in 

 which, through a long life of scarcely interrupted health, I have per- 

 severed, and probably shall persevere, as long as I have the power." 



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

 in 1829, thus sums up the character of this individual: — "If the ques- 

 tion were put to me, who is the most scientific horticulturist now living,'' 

 who unites to a knowledge of the practices of gardening the most per- 

 fect knowledge of the sciences that assist it.'* Avhich of living horticul- 

 turists has conferred the greatest benefits upon our art.^ 1 should quote 

 Mr. Knight, in reply to them all. Whether we follow him in his re- 

 searches as a physiologist, in his luminous observations and discoveries 

 respecting the sap of j)lants; as a general cultivator in the numerous 

 papers on every branch of horticulture in the transactions of the Socie- 

 ty of which he is President, and especially in the raising of improved 

 fruits and culinary esculents, we find in all, the most ample justification 

 of our opinion, that he is the first horticulturist of our times. Nor is 

 he eminent alone in the higher walks of horticulture; for, at Downtoa 

 Hall, he demonstrates that he is capable of securing the correct per- 

 formance 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 Pre- 

 sident, in 1811, he was elected to fill that office, which he held to the pe- 

 riod of his decease. Until even the later period of his life, he was a 

 constant, and almost the universal contributor to the transactions of the 

 Society, where iiis death will prove a great chasm. Although distin- 

 guished particularly for his attention to fruits, he was well versed in 

 every department of practical horticulture; and, if his researches in 

 vegetable |ihysiology have not tended much to the improvement of this 

 art, they show proofs of enlarged thought. Hi? fortune was not prince- 

 ly, but his gifts to the promotion of science were nmnificcnt, and his 

 domains in Herefordshire displayed a very interesting development of 

 the ])rinciples of modern horticulture. 



Mr. Knight was the author of the following works, independent of 

 his extensive contributions to the Transactions of the Royal and Horti- 

 cultural Societies. The following is a list of the former: — 



