928 



JOTHNAL OF THE KOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



their Museums, and his 1 Annual Reports,' to be laid before Parliament, 

 on the progress and condition of the Royal Gardens." 



The number of plates published by Sir William is estimated to be 

 nearer 8,000 than a lower number mentioned by De Candolle, and no Less 

 than 1,800 were from drawings executed by himself. 



"With the commencement of a 'Synopsis Filicum,' which the com- 

 pleted 'Species Filicum' made a comparatively easy task, my father's 

 labours terminated. His end was unexpected. On the Monday forenoon 

 he spent two hours with me in inspecting Battersea Park, then in 

 formation; here he left me and walked part of the way back to Kew, 

 meeting by appointment the Queen of the Sandwich Islands and the 

 Rev. Mr. Berkeley, with both of whom he spent the whole afternoon in 

 the Gardens. On Tuesday morning his servant came to tell me that his 

 master could not swallow. I followed immediately, and found him 

 perfectly well except for this paralysis of the muscles of deglutition. I at 

 once sent to London for the best advice, but to no purpose. I saw him 

 no more, for, sleeping on the floor by his bedside that night, under an 

 open window, I was suddenly prostrated with rheumatic fever. Mean- 

 while he gradually sank, suffering no pain nor feeling the want of 

 nourishment ; and died from exhaustion, Saturday, August 12, in his 

 eighty-first year. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne's, Kew. 

 A handsome tablet in the church, with a central medallion profile by 

 Woolner, and spandrels with groups of ferns in the corners, all in 

 Wedgwood ware, record the dates of his birth, death, &c, with the 

 motto, ' Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy wjrks.' 



" [n person Sir William was over six feet high, erect, slim, muscular ; 

 forehead broad and high, but receding, hair nearly black, complexion 

 sanguine, eves brown, nose aquiline — had been broken in a school fight ; 

 his mobile face, and especially mouth, was the despair of artists. [In 

 a footnote we read that " he was a vigorous pedestrian, covering 

 sixty miles a day with ease. When taking the week's-end rest at 

 Helensburgh, during his summer course of lectures, he habitually on 

 Sunday walked to Glasgow, twenty-two miles, to be in time for his eight 

 o'clock Monday morning class."] Many chalk portraits of him were 

 taken for friends by Sir Daniel Macnee, of which the best known to me is 

 that which prefaces this article. Other portraits of him are two life-size 

 in oil by Thomas Phillips, R.A., one in my possession, and the other in 

 that of Sir Leonard Lyell, Bart., of Kinnordv ; the half-length in oil by 

 (iambardella, in the Linnean Society's meeting-room ; a small engraving 

 in the series of portraits of members of the Athemeum Club, one by 

 Maguire in the Ipswich series of portraits of scientific men ; and an 

 etching in profile by Mrs. Dawson Turner, from a profile by Cotman, 

 unpublished, but widely distributed. There is also the bust in marble by 

 Woolner in the Kew Museum, an excellent likeness. 



" lie was a Fellow of the Royal, Linnean, Antiquarian, and Royal 

 Geographical Societies, LL.D. of Glasgow, D.C.L. of Oxford, a corre- 

 spondent of the Academy of Sciences of France, Companion of the Legion 

 of Honour, and member of almost every Academy in Europe and America 

 which cultivated the Natural Sciences. In 183G he received the honour 



