10 HENRY FLETCHER HANCE. 
but I cannot speak with certainty, as I never heard from him 
again. 
* Enough has been said to indicate how undaunted was the 
spirit, and how earnest the purpose, that animated Dr. Hance’s 
frail body. But there were also in his character traits of almost 
more intimate friends. With all the courage of his matured 
opinions, he was chivalrous, even to Quixotism, in their expression, 
and shrank from saying or doing anything that i oe be 
construed as the outcome of jealousy or spite nstance, I 
once asked him, on behalf of the Council of the Ohina em ch of 
the Royal Asiatic Society, for a confidential _—s on a botanical 
paper which hai been submitted to us. He gave it, but only with 
the greatest reluctance, and, while admitting ‘that we had an un- 
questionable right to call for his advice, as a corresponding member, 
he said afterwards :——* But I really felt as if I had done an nalts 
hand rat since ~ was not an open criticism but a private opinion 
ave. act, I —— rather give a formal opinion to the 
Council, ‘to Bicon: that I was candid and honest, and they might do 
what they chose with it.” No wonder that such a man should 
write on another occasion:— Thank Heaven, I have always been 
able to keep clear of cliques, ies to criticise any one, regardless of 
his influence or repu oe and again, ‘‘I pe rsonally cannot 
ever ready to draw upon his et or oe stores of know- 
ledge for the benefit of those abou He was equally ready to 
afford information to others at a eres pen especially if he 
found in them, or had himself imbued them with, an interest in 
his own lavounte science, 
 visbeseny in 1869, I sent him a letter of introduction, wits an 
nd, 
I feel it as much a duty as a pleasure to reply to such invitations 
as yours. I have written with a freedom and unreserve for which 
I ought perhaps to apologize, as I have not the pleasure of knowing 
you personally, but I trust the sort of natural freemasony ~~ gst 
the common cultivators of a science will be my sufficient e 
On more than one occasion afterwards, in lies to Ghdetibis 
about _ ign he not only furnished me with the 
information, but would add a eritical review of the whole literature 
of the sie tideat his fixed idea seems to have been that, as 
the only professed botanist in China, it behoved him to encourage 
others to collect and study the plants of that Empive,at any sacrifice 
