10 
WILLIS : HISTORY OF THE 
Thwaites retired in the beginning of 1880, after a long 
service of 31 years, spent without once quitting the Colony. 
Dr. Morris, the Assistant Director, had left for an appoint- 
ment in Jamaica a short time before, and the vacancy in the 
Directorship was filled by the appointment of Henry Trimen, 
M.B., F.L.S., Assistant in the Botanical Department of the 
British Museum. Thwaites retired to Kandy, where he pur- 
chased Fairieland bungalow. During his tenure of office he 
had received the distinctions of F.R.S. (1864), Honorary 
Degree of Ph.D., and C.M.G. (1878). He died in 1882 at 
the age of 70. A memorial building, containing a brass, was 
erected in the gardens soon afterwards. 
The new Director arrived at a time of trial for the Colony, 
for the coffee industry was rapidly sinking under the attacks 
of its fungus enemy. At this period Mr. (now Professor) H. 
Marshall Ward came out for two years, 1880-82, to carry out 
a series of researches into the life-history of the Hemileia 
with the view of endeavouring to discover preventive mea- 
sures. The mission, though successful in the former object, 
was unsuccessful in the latter, as Thwaites and Mr. Ward 
himself had predicted would likely be the case. No Assist- 
ant Director was appointed at this time, but the appointment 
of Conductor was revived, and Mr. P. D. G. Clark was 
appointed to it as Head Gardener. The garden at Peradeniya 
was largely cleared of the redundant vegetation it contained, 
and the South Garden, the last remaining uncultivated piece, 
laid out systematically. With the appointment of Mr. W. 
Nock in 1882 to the post of Superintendent of Hakgala, that 
garden was also taken in hand, and gradually transformed 
from a cinchona nursery into the beautiful and useful 
Botanic Garden that it now is. In 1883 the small branch 
garden at Anuradhapura, the capital of the North-Central 
Province, was opened ; this gave the opportunity, hitherto 
wanting, of growing many plants which are intolerant of 
the wet climate of the three already existing gardens. The 
climate of Anuradhapura, 300 feet above sea level, is that 
