SIR TREVOR LAWRENCE, BART., K.C.V.O., etc. 515 



in all ranks of life, and in every quarter of the globe, among 

 them being the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, a colleague 

 in Parliament, who, during his strenuous labours at the Colonial 

 Office, yet found time to exchange long holograph letters on 

 Orchids with Sir Trevor. Among his " volunteer collectors " was 

 his younger son, Capt. C. T. Lawrence, who, while stationed 

 in West Africa, sent him home many rare or unknown species, 

 including the bulbs of Zephyr anthes aurea, a plant which by 

 some unknown chance had become acclimatized in West 

 Africa, and for which he obtained a First Class Certificate, and 

 a Listrostachys sp. (unidentified at Kew) which was flowering 

 at his death, despite an accident in transhipment which led 

 to its spending no inconsiderable time in the water and on 

 the shores of the Mersey before it was recovered. He knew 

 every plant in his collection and his love of them survived 

 to the last. Up to about a month before his death he used to 

 be regularly wheeled through the garden and glasshouses, always 

 carrying a sharp pair of scissors and cutting off a dead or diseased 

 leaf here and there, and manifesting as great an interest and 

 keen a memory as ever. The last plant on which his eyes rested 

 was a basket of Laelia Gouldiana, carrying more than forty 

 blossoms. It was taken into his room a day or two before he 

 died, and after admiring its beauty he said " Take it back, the 

 air of this room is not good for it." These blossoms were woven 

 into the cross which was laid on his coffin. 



Sir Trevor was one of the most amiable of men, endowed with 

 much of the old-fashioned courtesy of days gone by, without the 

 formality and insincerity which too often underlay so much of 

 that bygone courtesy. People who did not really know him 

 were occasionally apt at first experience to think him a little 

 y stiff " or " stand-offish " — for he had a certain reserved and 

 dignified manner towards strangers, especially to any who 

 attempted familiarity or rudeness ; those who knew him well 

 always regarded him as the very type of a perfect English 

 gentleman as well as a most charming and lovable friend. Speak- 

 ing in the Society's Hall after the international banquet of 1912, 

 Monsieur Maurice de Vilmorin, one of the foremost horticulturists 

 of the world, used the following words : " Your President has very 

 quickly conquered all who have ever had the good fortune to be 

 brought into personal contact with him — conquered them by 

 the only force worth conquering with, the amiability and good 

 grace of his charming personality." In presiding at meetings of 

 the Society or of the Council he had a wonderful tact in pushing 

 aside causes of irritation before they developed to a head. 



