92 



Amongst the deceased members, I find twenty-seven on the 

 Home, and four on the Foreign list, including some very consider- 

 able names. I shall now proceed to notice such of their number 

 as have been most distinguished for their scientific labours, for their 

 public services, or for their encouragement and patronage of science 

 and the arts. 



Thomas Andrew Knight, of Downton Castle, Herefordshire, the 

 President of the Horticultural Society of London, to the establish- 

 ment and success of which he so greatly contributed, was born in the 

 year 1758. He was educated at Ludlow school, and afterwards be- 

 came a member of Balliol College, Oxford. From his earliest years 

 he appears to have shown a predominant taste for experimental 

 researches in gardening and vegetable physiology, which the imme- 

 diate and uncontrolled possession of an ample fortune gave him 

 every opportunity of indulging ; proposing to himself in fact, as one 

 of the great objects of his life, to effect improvements in the pro- 

 ductions of the vegetable kingdom, by new modes of culture, by the 

 impregnation of different varieties of the same species, and various 

 other expedients, commensurate with those which had already been 

 effected by agriculturists and others in the animal kingdom, by a 

 careful selection of parents, by judicious crossing, and by the avoid- 

 ance of too close an alliance of breeds. In the year 1795 he contri- 

 buted to our Transactions his first, and perhaps his most important 

 paper, on the transmission of the diseases of decay and old age of 

 the parent- tree to all its descendants propagated by grafting or 

 layers, being the result of experiments which had already been long 

 continued and very extensively varied, and which developed views 

 of the greatest importance and novelty in the economy of practical 

 gardening, and likewise of very great interest in vegetable physio- 

 logy. This paper was succeeded by more than twenty others, 

 chiefly written between the years 1799 and 1812, containing the de- 

 tails of his most ingenious and original experimental researches on 

 the ascent and descent of the sap in trees ; on the origin and offices 

 of the alburnum and bark ; on the phenomena of germination ; on the 

 functions of leaves ; on the influence of light, and upon many other 

 subjects, constituting a series of facts and of deductions from them, 

 which have exercised the most marked influence upon the progress 

 of our knowledge of this most important department of the laws of 

 vegetable organization and life. 



Mr. Knight succeeded Sir Joseph Banks in the presidency of the 

 Horticultural Society, and contributed no fewer than 114- papers 

 to the different volumes of its Transactions : these contributions 

 embrace almost every variety of subject connected with Horti- 

 culture; such as the production of new and improved varieties 

 of fruits and vegetables ; the adoption of new modes of grafting, 

 planting, and training fruit-trees ; the construction of forcing-frames 

 and hot-houses ; the economy of bees, and many other questions 

 of practical gardening, presenting the most important results of his 

 very numerous and well-devised experiments. 



Mr. Knight was a person of great activity of body and mind, 



