xiv Obituary . — Henry Harold Welch Pearson . 
Garden correspondence, writing up research notes, reading scientific periodi- 
cals, and finishing the day with some book on the war. On Wednesday, 
Saturday, and Sunday he began the day with a ride before breakfast and 
devoted the rest of the morning to the Gardens. With the help of 
a coloured labourer he arranged and planted all the Cycads. The design 
and construction of all new work he thought out while wandering over the 
estate and imparted his ideas to the Curator who drew up plans for his 
approval.’ 
During his brief tenure of the Directorship he gave himself unsparingly 
to the work of construction, and the impression left on my mind after our 
tour of the Garden was that under his guidance Kirstenbosch would in 
course of time rival the best Gardens in the world. As the author of an 
obituary notice in the ‘ Cape Argus ’ says, ‘ he threw his whole soul 1 
into the business of founding the National Garden and ‘ carried out a work 
which will live for ever and which may be regarded as one of the treasures 
of South Africa ’. His burial-place, to quote from the 4 Cape Times 4 faces 
the slope with the Cycad plantation, the one little section of his plans 
which, in the short time vouchsafed him, he was able to bring near 
completion’. The funeral service, in which the Archbishop of Cape Town 
took part, was held in the Protea church close to the Garden. 
A few months after I saw Pearson in Cape Town he wrote to me 
about the condition of affairs in South Africa, showing his usual grasp of 
the political situation, and added : 4 Botha’s action has been magnificent 
and has had a great effect. Even I have volunteered for any work they 
choose to put so useless a person to.’ And in April, 1915, ‘I have felt 
a little easier in my mind since I volunteered for local defence. I am now 
enrolled as a mounted infantryman, my official title being 44 Trooper Pearson”, 
which gives me some measure of satisfaction.’ Pearson was one of the 
guard of honour when General Botha returned from the conquest of 
German South-West Africa. 
The range of subjects illuminated by Pearson’s researches is shown by 
an inspection of the Bibliography. His contributions to the morphology 
and reproduction of the Gnetales have a special significance both from the 
point of view of their great interest to botanists and as illustrating his 
skill as an investigator and his power of grappling with particularly difficult 
problems. As a systematist he held a high position : his earlier papers 
written at Kew deal with plants from many regions, and the fact that he 
was invited to describe the Verbenaceae and the Thymelaeaceae in the 
4 Flora Capensis ’ and the f Flora of Tropical Africa ’ respectively shows that 
his ability in this branch of the subject received due recognition. His later 
papers on systematic botany are concerned chiefly with the rich material 
collected by himself. Pearson gave special attention to the examination 
of the desert flora of South-West Africa, particularly from the point of view 
