xii Obituary Notices of Felloios deceased. 



As already stated, Oliver entered Kew in 1858, when funds were low and 

 Sir William Hooker was struggling in the face of great difficulties to lay the 

 foundation of a scientific botanic establishment, in this he was ably assisted 

 by his son, J. D. Hooker, and Daniel Oliver. At this period Hooker's private 

 herbarium and portions of his unrivalled private librarj^ were housed in the 

 old part of the j^resent range of Herbarium buildings, together with the 

 collections and books presented to the nation by George Bentham, William 

 Arnold Bromfield, and others. Dr. J. D. Hooker's Australasian, Antarctic, 

 and Indian collections, as well as those of William Griffith and several other 

 notable travellers, were in process of classification and elaboration. This 

 involved an immense amount of mechanical labour which Oliver took up with 

 untiring energy in return for a mere pittance. In 1859 he inaugurated a free 

 course of lectures on Botany to the young gardeners of Kew Gardens, and this 

 was supplemented in 1860 by instructional evenings devoted to elementary 

 chemistry, electricity, meteorology and meteorological instruments, varied by 

 .readings of selections from the Kew correspondence of Gustav Mann, 

 Dr. F. Welwitsch, and others. He continued the lectures on Botany until 

 1874. The writer's acquaintance and official association with Prof. D. Oliver 

 began in the autumn of 1860, and most of what follows is given from personal 

 knowledge. 



Fortunately for Oliver, his meagre Kew stipend was soon augmented in a 

 substantial manner by his appointment in 1861 in succession to Dr. Lindley 

 to the Botanical Chair of University College, London, which he occupied until 

 1888. During a number of terms I had the advantage of acting as his 

 preparer, for which I was liberally remunerated, besides adding to my very 

 slender stock of general knowledge. In this connection let it be mentioned 

 that every hour, indeed every quarter of an hour, borrowed from his official 

 time at Kew was repaid to a minute. But he was scrupulously conscientious 

 in all things, and a disciplined example to his subordinates in punctuality 

 and other qualities that make an effective and respected leader. 



Eeturning to his published work, after his settlement at Kew ; only a small 

 selection can be noticed. He was the principal contributor on Botany and 

 Assistant Editor of Busk's ' Natural History Keview,' 1861-65. It was in 

 this serial that his paper appeared on " The Atlantis Hypothesis in its 

 Botanical Aspect," a paper that created unusual interest at the time. The 

 paper was written in controversion of Heer and Unger's hypothesis that 

 during the Miocene Period there existed an Atlantic junction between Europe 

 and America.' Oliver's arguments against this hypothesis were based on 

 known facts of the recent distribution of plants and a critical traverse of Heer 

 and Unger's identifications. Asa Gray's comparison of the floras of eastern 

 North America and Japan is also quoted by Oliver in support of his position. 

 No serious defence of Heer and Unger has been attempted, I believe ; and 

 Unger's ' New Holland in Europa,' of about the same period, was adversely 

 criticised by George Bentham and indirectly by Oliver. 



Many of Oliver's papers of great interest on Systematic and Geographical 



