2 HENRY FLETCHER HANCE. 
Wherever his training was received, it resulted in making him a 
polished Latinist and a facile writer of French, while his knowledge 
of German certainly influenced his tone of scientific thought in 
after years. 
On the Ist of September, 1844, when he was seventeen years of 
age, he entered the Civil Service of Hongkong, on the nomination 
of Sir John Davis, Governor of that Colony. In — less than 
ten years he was transferred to the Superintendency of Trade in 
China, under the control of the Foreign Office, taking his phee as 
80 Assistant on May Ist, 1854. As his friend Sir Thom s Wade 
rites :—‘‘ His position was slightly, his prospects ver BN im- 
roves by the ape Pee he owed to the recommendation of 
Sir John Bow wring, W. as eye ee to bring forward any man 
connected with ne a literatur 
oe the time of the dumi bance arising from the attack on the 
‘Arrow,’ which led to the second war with China, he was 
: 8, an 
ade, ‘‘right well he worked” during the exciting period of the 
commencement of hostilities. In wt 1856, after the burning 
of the Foreign Factories at Canton, which cost him a serious loss 
of property, including books and botazibit collections, he left for 
Hongkong. There he became Senior Assistant in the Superin- 
tendency, with the care of ag archives, his experience in the work 
of this department securing him an appointment which he himself 
ad in no way solicited. 
n May, 1859, when the Superintendency was broken uP by the 
éetablisheent of H.M.’s Legation in China, Dr. Hance und, to 
his regret, that he had to go back to his post as Senior hesittans at 
Canton ; but on March 26th, 1861, he was made Vice-Consul at 
parture of the late Sir Brooke Robertson for home, when he 
ook charge of the Canton Consulate from March, 187 8, till 
tL 1879. In 1881 he was again Acting Consul at Canton 
ugust to December, and he held the same appointment ved 
a “third time du Mr. Consul Spey absence on sick leay 
: ve 
aoe ger feeling was that he had ahi bited no lack of those 
qi . , 
— and in Jan 1884, he wrote me:—*« dst the 
worry and anxiety ‘of my daily life, I have been unable, 
except for a spare half-hour or so, to do anything at all botanically; 
but I hope, rather than expect, in a more or less proximate future, 
to get a little more time. I PA al gave up’ library and herbarium 
at the time of the irruption on Shameen! ‘Inter arma silent 
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