HENRY FLETCHER HANCE. 3 
ose and I am afraid Britten will find my reed very voiceless 
this year 
Fi nally, after another return to his old post at Whampoa, he 
was appointed Acting Consul at Amoy in May of last year; but he 
had been there only for about a month when his sudden — on 
June 22nd, closed his career of forty-two years’ faithful se 
Dx, Han nee was a married, and leaves a widow and | several 
ghilaven. His remain taken to Hongkong, and , on 
June 26th, 1886, in the beautiful Wong-nei-chung Va ies the 
wooded slopes of which were the a of many a plant gathered 
or described by him during his ata 
It had 
the case, I feel it a duty to my friend’s memory to have these 
0 d suspicions publicly cleared up. And this I am glad to 
be able t Pie. He testimony of Sir Thom 
Wade, K c.C B.,: h r. Hance for forty years, and _ 
his ‘amalints chie 
Thomas writes as follows :—‘‘I became Seunsaiad with 
Hance in 1846 or 1847, when he was a clerk in the Government 
offices at Hongkong, but it was not till after his transfer to the 
Superintendency, which, as you are aware, anteceded the 
em u 
an opinion of his merits as a public officer. Ti was very favourable. 
that I ever met a man who seemed tant in his 
endeavour to do his duty. He had the misfortune not to know 
ile he was in the Colonial service there was no 
inducement t6 him to study the language, and his leisure was 
devoted to his favourite a Botany. When he was transferred 
to the Foreign Office service, although not old, he was no longer 
young, and he was very band worked. The Foreign Office rule, 
whi shin , I observed n oo to disturb the estima mate I had | 
earlier b ocr of his character, and which I have given you with 
e or less explicitness above. 
ccording to a sympathetic notice of Dr. Hanes in the ‘ China 
Mail’ of sae 26th, 1886, he took up Botany o arrival in 
Hongkong in 1844, but his own letters to me viet that he had 
