BRIEFER ARTICLES 



HENRY HAROLD WELCH PEARSON 



(with portrait) 



Professor H. H. W. Pearson, professor of botany in the South 

 African College at Cape Town, died November 3, 19 16. He was born 

 at Long Sutton, England, in 1870, and was educated at Cambridge, 

 receiving the M.A. degree in 1900 and the Sc.D. in 1907. He was 

 assistant curator of the Cambridge herbarium from 1898 to 1899, 



and then went to the Kew 



Gardens where he remained 







until 



1903 



From Kew he 



went to the South African 

 College, where his principal 

 work was done. His thor- 

 ough training in taxonomy 

 enabled him to utilize at 

 once the opportunity of a rich 

 and little studied flora, and 

 he made numerous contribu- 

 tions to the Flora of South 

 Africa, Flora Capensis, Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, Geo- 

 graphic Journal, Annals of 

 Botany, and other periodi- 

 cals. His researches were 

 not confined to taxonomy. 

 There were ecological papers 

 upon South African cycads 

 and morphological studies of Welwitschia and Gnetum, two genera in 

 which he was so deeply interested that he not only spent a great deal of 

 time and money, but eagerly endured the hardship of collecting material 

 in distant and almost inaccessible places. 



In a letter dated September 8, 1916, he states that he has in press 

 two papers on Gnetum, and that he was to make another trip to Damara- 



Botanical Gazette, vol. 63] [150 



