338 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



to accept the undesigned appointment, and to take the young 

 botanist with him to the Cape as his assistant. This was done, 

 and the brothers sailed for that colony in the year 1835. But 

 the health of the elder brother suddenly and hopelessly failed 

 within a year, and he died in 1836 on the passage home. 

 William Harvey's appointment to succeed his brother had 

 been sent to the Cape while he was on his homeward voyage : 

 he immediately returned to his post, and fulfilled its duties for 

 three years, devoting his mornings to collecting and his nights 

 to botanical investigation, with such assiduity that his health 

 also gave way, and he was compelled to return home in 1839. 

 The summer of the next year found him reestablished and on 

 his way to the Cape for the third time. But he could not 

 long endure the sultry climate and the intense application ; 

 with broken health he came back in 1841 and gave up the 

 appointment. 



After two years of prostration and seclusion he was well 

 again ; and in 1844, on the death of Dr. Coulter, he was ap- 

 pointed keeper of the herbarium of Trinity College, Dublin. 

 The most important portion of the herbarium then consisted 

 of the collections, yet unassorted, made by Coulter in north- 

 western Mexico and California. Harvey generously added 

 his own large collections, for which he was allowed fifty 

 pounds a year, in addition to a slender salary, and he pro- 

 ceeded to build up the herbarium into a first-class estab- 

 lishment. The professorship of botany in the college, which 

 was pretty well endowed, fell vacant about this time ; and the 

 college authorities, wishing to elect Harvey to the chair and 

 so to combine the two offices, conferred upon him the neces- 

 sary degree of M. D. But it was contended that an honorary 

 degree did not meet the requirements, and so Dr. Allman, the 

 present distinguished professor of natural history at Edin- 

 burgh, carried the election. 



Except for the slenderness of his salary, Dr. Harvey was 

 now well placed for scientific work, the object to which he 

 wished to devote his life ; and he entered upon and pursued 

 his distinguished career henceforth with an entire and well- 

 directed energy that never flagged until he was prostrated by 

 mortal disease. 



