1886.] President' s Address. li 



herbarium he -Durchased and incorporated with his own. This 

 splendid collection became the property of the Government in 1863, 

 but like Dr. Wright's Indian collection, was simply stored without any 

 supervision, the result being much irreparable damage. Of Dr. 

 Harvey's working up of about one-third of it I will speak presently. 



Next in the record stands one who was a great collector of Cape 

 plants, and something more — the chiefest of their historians. 



The name of Dr. William Henry Harvey is known to almost every 

 educated person at the Cape as par excellence the botanist of our Colony. 

 He was born February 5th, 1811, at Summerville, near Limerick, in 

 which citj^ his father was a respected merchant and a member of the 

 Society of Friends, or ''Quakers." Educated in a school belonging 

 to that religious body, young Harvey entered his father's counting- 

 house with the intention of commencing a business life. He spent all 

 his spare time, however, in the pursuit of natural history, being 

 particularly attracted to the study of mosses and algee. The discovery 

 of a new locality for a rare moss, Rookeria Icetevirens, led to a corre- 

 spondence with Sir William Jackson Hooker, and the formation of a 

 lifelong friendship with him. By degrees Harvey's predilection for 

 science became so marked that he began to consider in what way he 

 could give all his leisure to new investigations. He was ultimately 

 recommended by Lord Monteagle, then Mr. Spring Eice, for the 

 office of Colonial Treasurer at the Cape. By a clerical error, the name 

 of his elder brother was inserted in the commission, and political 

 changes rendered it impossible to rectify the error. In consequence, 

 the two brothers sailed for the Cape in 1835, the one to take up 

 an appointment wholly undesigned, the other to act as his assistant. 

 Before the year was out, however, the health of the elder brother 

 utterly failed, and he died on his passage home. The post was then 

 offered to William Harvey, for whom it had been originally solicited. 

 He fufiUed its somewhat onerous duties in official hours for tliree 

 years, but devoted every moment of leisure to collecting and study, 

 rising with early dawn to visit the mountain slopes and plateaux to ■ 

 bring material for the evening's labours. So incessant was his 

 application that he, too, was compelled to return home for six months' 

 rest. In 1840 he resumed his duties, but was only able to continue 

 working for a short time. Most reluctantly he resigned his 

 appointment, being threatened with serious mental derangement, and 

 returned to his friends for complete rest and medical treatment. In 

 1844 he was so far re-established that he accepted the position of 

 Keeper of the Trinity College Herbarium at Dublin, on the demise of 

 Dr. Coulter. The collection was a mere unarranged mass of material, 

 the gatherings of his predecessor during travel in California and 

 Mexico. Harvey threw into it his own very extensive Cape collections, 

 and commenced to ordinate the whole into something worthy of the 

 College. The Professorship of Botany fell vacant about this time, 

 and as the statutes required that it should be held by a qualified 

 Doctor of Medicine, the Senatus of the University conferred on him 

 the honorary degree of M.D. But difficulties arose, Harvej^ declined 

 to push his claim, and the chair was ultimately filled by Dr. Allman. 



From this time Dr. Harvey's life was one of continuous work. In 

 the third year of his Cape career he had pubKshed a most useful com- 

 pendium of Cape Botany, the " Genera of South African Plants, " 

 revising and reconstructing the older generic definitions according to 



