DUBLIN AND BOSTON 213 



funds, had long since embarked on comprehensive schemes for 

 the development of both science and art. To its activity is 

 due the foundation and building up of many of the leading 

 educational institutions in Dublin the National Museum, the 

 National Library, the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, the 

 Metropolitan School of Art. The Society had established also 

 professorships of zoology, botany, natural philosophy, chemistry, 

 and so on. In 1848 the professorship of botany became vacant 

 by the death of Dr Samuel Litton, and Harvey applied for the 

 post. These appointments were made by the vote of the 

 members at large, and strongly against his inclination, he had 

 to enter on a personal canvass, of some experiences of which he 

 gives a half humourous, half pathetic account in a letter to 

 N. B. Ward, of " Wardian case " fame, who throughout life was 

 one of his most regular correspondents. The issue was satis- 

 factory, Harvey being elected by a three-fourths majority. This 

 appointment placed him in control of the Glasnevin Botanic 

 Gardens, of which Dr David Moore, so well known by his work 

 on the Irish flora, was curator. It made him responsible besides 

 for the delivery annually of courses of botanical lectures in 

 Dublin, and also, at intervals, in selected towns in various parts 

 of Ireland. 



In the spring of 1849 Harvey accepted an invitation from 

 the Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University to deliver 

 twelve lectures on botany at the Lowell Institute at Boston, and 

 others at Washington. The subject he chose for the Boston 

 course was a comprehensive survey of the plant-world, from the 

 point of view of the " progressive organization of the vegetable 

 entity." The cryptogams had a place of honour, four lectures 

 being devoted to Algae : it is interesting to note that the Fungi, 

 which he designates " the most aristocratic of Crypts^/ru^es 

 consiimere nati" he placed immediately below the Flowering 

 Plants, for reasons which, no doubt, he gave in his discourses. 

 He sailed from Liverpool in July. Ocean traffic had been 

 revolutionized since his last voyage from the Cape ; instead of 

 a dawdling sailing-ship, a steamer transported him in ten days 

 to Nova Scotia; and with some of the old excitement with 

 which he had started on his first climb up Table Mountain, he 



