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ALLAN OCTAVIAN HUME, C.B. 



(1829-1912.) 



In the course of a long and busy life Allan Octavian Hume 

 played many parts. The best years of his life were devoted to 

 administration under the Indian Government — in his early days 

 he helped in the suppression of the Mutiny — but he found time to 

 make an invaluable collection of the birds of India, which he pre- 

 sented many years ago to the British Museum. Unfortunately 

 the manuscript of this work, for which the collection was the 

 basis, was destroyed. The son of a politician — Joseph Hume, an 

 ardent reformer — Hume was himself deeply interested in politics, 

 especially relating to India, and the Indian National Congress 

 Movement was the outcome of his enthusiasm for reform. After 

 his return to England in 1890 he became President of the Dulwich 

 Liberal and Eadical Association, and held the office until his death 

 a few weeks ago. 



Hume's interest in botany, at any rate as an active worker, 

 was comparatively recent. His introduction to the Department 

 of Botany was as a co-worker at the plants of Cornwall with Mr. 

 F. H. Davey, about twelve years ago. Later he was a frequent 

 and perhaps not always a welcome visitor in connection with his 

 penchant for collecting aliens. He would bring all sorts of things 

 from all sorts of places, naturally with the idea of finding names 

 for them ; and it was impossible to convince him that chance 

 specimens of annuals sent from a piece of waste ground in or near 

 a dock, which would die down at the end of the season and 

 probably never appear again, were not necessarily of botanical 

 interest. Hume's motive was, however, a praiseworthy one. He 

 was busily engaged in getting together a collection of British 

 plants which was to form the nucleus of an Institute for the 

 advancement of the study of Botany in South London. To this 

 he added a generous endowment of more than £10,000, and about 

 a year before his death had the satisfaction of seeing the collec- 

 tion established in a good substantial house in the Norwood 

 Road, under the superintendence of his curator Mr. W. H. Griffin, 

 an enthusiastic student of British botany. A feature of the col- 

 lection is the large number of seedlings, the majority grown for 

 the purpose by Mr. Griffin, for which the garden attached to the 

 Institute affords facilities. In addition to the plants collected by 

 Mr. Hume himself the herbarium contains the late Mr. Town- 

 send's valuable collection of British and European plants, and 

 also the late W. H. Beeby's herbarium, which was especially rich 

 in plants of the Shetland Islands. Altogether it contains more 

 than forty thousand specimens, beautifully dried and mounted. 

 There is also an admirable working library. During his lifetime 

 Hume invited several botanists to act with him as trustees of 

 the endowment, and these, with some well-known workers in 

 British botany, form the committee of management. By the terms 

 of Hume's will the Institute will ultimately benefit still further. 



