BRIEFER ARTICLES 
WILLIAM HARRIS 
(WITH PORTRAIT) 
Witt1am Harris was born November 15, 1860, at Enniskillen on 
Lough Erie, in County F ermanagh, northern Ireland, and was of Scotch 
descent. In 1881 he went to Jamaica, and left there for the first time 
in September 1920, when he came to the United States to receive medical 
treatment for an inflammation of the esophagus. He died at the home 
of his elder son in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 11, 1920. 
After receiving his earlier education from tutors at home, and 
spending some months at Cowan’s Nurseries, Liverpool, at the age of 
eighteen Mr. Harris went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to 
study botany and gardening. Before he was twenty-one he was appointed 
from Kew to be superintendent in the Botanical Department of Jamaica. 
In 1899 the value of his botanical work was recognized by his election to 
the Linnaean Society of London. In 1908 he became Superintendent 
of Public Gardens and Plantations in Jamaica, and in 1917 was made 
Government Botanist. In April 1920 he was appointed Assistant 
Director of Agriculture, retaining also the office of Government Botanist. 
In his several official positions he showed a high degree of administrative 
ability. He possessed not only the capacity for looking after essential 
details in carrying out plans, but had also the imagination necessary 
for planning new projects. During the war Mr. Harris served with 
untiring energy as secretary to the Advisory Board on Food Production. 
Mr. Harris was a naturalist from boyhood. This was perhaps to be 
expected of one whose father was devoted to plants and gardening, and 
whose youth was spent amid the lakes and rugged hills about his birth- 
place. Throughout his life, in spite of many administrative duties, he 
remained an ardent and keenly observant field naturalist. Although his 
interest was primarily in plants, it also embraced animals. The writer, 
for example, recalls participating in a rather exciting chase of a 4 ft. 
iguana, which seemed ignominiously ended with the big lizard ensconced 
in a narrow mouthed pocket in a limestone ledge, but Mr. Harris volun- 
teered to seize the ugly jawed creature by the neck and so to pull 
331] [Botanical Gazette, vol. 71 
