John Gilbert Baker. 



xxvii 



five years after his retirement from the keepership, and his demission of this 

 work at the age of seventy in 1904 was a source of unmixed regret. But he 

 still continued his private studies in the herbarium, and, although towards 

 the close of his life his physical strength gradually declined, there was no 

 impairment of his intellectual vigour. He died at Kew, in his eighty-seventh 

 year, on August 16, 1920. 



Baker's first task on reaching Kew was the completion of the ' Synopsis 

 Filicum.' Tliis he prosecuted with such industry that the work was published 

 in 1868, and with such ability that he became immediately a leading 

 authority on vascular cryptogams, and was at once invited to prepare the 

 volume in the great ' Flora Brasiliensis,' edited by Von Martins, which deals 

 with the ferns of Brazil. This volume, which appeared in 1870, was but one 

 of many further contributions on the same subject. A new edition of the 

 ' Synopsis ' was soon called for, and the work was carefully revised by Baker 

 before its re-issue in 1874. In 1875 he presented to the Eoyal Irish 

 Academy an account of the ferns of the Seychelles. Sir William Hooker, 

 in 1854, had supplemented the ' Species Filicum ' by devoting the tenth 

 volume of the ' Icones Plantarum ' to the illustration of a century of new, 

 rare, and imperfectly known ferns. Following this example, Baker supple- 

 mented the ' Synopsis Filicum' by completing in 1887 a second century of 

 new and rare ferns, illustrated in the seventeenth volume of the ' Icones.' 

 In 1887, also, he provided, as a companion to the ' Synopsis,' a welcome 

 handbook of the fern-allies, and in 1892 he contributed to the 'Annals of 

 Botany ' a summary of the ferns discovered or described since 1874. 



Baker's interest in roses was equally sustained. The review of the 

 British species, published in 1864, was followed by a monograph of British 

 roses, published by the Linnean Society in 1869, and by a revised classifica- 

 tion of the genus, contributed to the same society in 1902.' Baker also 

 wrote the botanical descriptions of the species figured by A. Parsons in the 

 fine monograph of the genus Rosa, published by Miss E. A. Willmott 

 between 1910 and 1914. 



These, however, were not the only monographic interests that Baker 

 displayed. He became the leading authority of his day on a number of 

 monocotyledonous natural families of plants. In dealing with this important 

 subject, he adopted simultaneously two radically distinct methods, both of 

 wlaich he employed with equal success. Between 1869 and 1899 he con- 

 tributed to the ' Gardeners' Chronicle ' numerous accounts of monocotyledo- 

 nous genera, designed especially for the benefit of those engaged in cultiva- 

 tion. To the ' Journal of the Eoyal Horticultural Society ' he supplied other 

 contributions of the same kind. As mindful of the needs of scientific 

 workers as he was of practical requirements, he contributed numerous 

 similar papers to the ' Journal of Botany ' during the same period. Between 

 1870 and 1880 he communicated to the Linnean Society instalments of 

 a monograph of the Ziliacece. In 1878 the same Society published his 

 monograph of the Hypoxidacem, and in 1887 its Journal included his ' Systema 



