350 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



first case of growing plants sent to New York thirty-five years 

 ago, which arrived as fresh and healthy as when they left 

 London ; and the transmission was quite successful between 

 England and Australia, when the voyage, confined to sailing- 

 ships, was far longer than now. So useful has this contriv- 

 ance proved to be in this respect, that the director of Kew 

 Gardens "feels safe in saying that a large proportion of the 

 most valuable economic and other tropical plants now culti- 

 vated in England would, but for these cases, not yet have 

 been introduced." The earliest published account of the War- 

 dian case was given by Mr. Ward in the form of a letter to 

 his near friend, the late Sir William Hooker, and was printed 

 in the " Companion to the Botanical Magazine " for May, 

 1836. His volume "On the Growth of Plants in Closely 

 Glazed Cases " appeared in the year 1842, and a second edi- 

 tion, considerably enlarged and suitably illustrated, was pub- 

 lished a few years later. These were, we believe, Mr. Ward's 

 only scientific publications, excepting reports of communica- 

 tions to various societies with which he was connected, several 

 of them relating to a subject near to his heart: the improve- 

 ment of the dwellings of the poor in England, and the amel- 

 ioration, in other respects, of their hard condition. A most 

 enthusiastic and, in some departments, a learned botanist, his 

 contributions to his favorite avocation were not in the form of 

 authorship, to which he seemed averse : a man " given to hos- 

 pitality " indeed, but as unpretending as it was cordial and 

 unlimited. The coming generation will hardly appreciate the 

 extent of the influence he exerted and the strength of the 

 attachment he inspired so widely among the cultivators of 

 natural science, nor understand, perhaps, how it could be 

 said of him, and without exaggeration, that " for very many 

 years his hospitable house, first in Wellclose Square, and lat- 

 terly at Clapham Rise, was the most frequented metropolitan 

 resort of naturalists from all quarters of the globe of any 

 since Sir Joseph Banks' day." But while any survive of those 

 who have had the privilege of knowing him personally, or in 

 the friendly correspondence he delighted in, Mr. Ward will 

 be remembered as " one of the gentlest, kindest, and purest," 

 and in the highest sense one of the best of men. 



