Harry Marshall Ward. 3 
open Scholarship at Christ’s College and went into residence in 
October, 1876. On November 20th following, Lucas, who had gone 
to Africa, died on board the S.S. Massowah between Suakim and 
Jeddah at the early age of 25. He proved to have been Marshall 
Ward’s benefactor and had made provision in his will for the con¬ 
tinuance of the subsidy. Marshall Ward took full advantage of his 
opportunities and attended the teaching of Sir Michael Foster in 
physiology and of Professor F. M. Balfour in comparative anatomy. 
He took a first-class in the Natural Science Tripos in 1879. His 
first published paper was the result of work done in the same year 
in the Laboratory at Kew. 
As was then customary with our young botanists Marshall 
Ward went to Germany for a short time and worked at Wurzburg 
under Sachs, whose Lectures on the Physiology of Plants he 
afterwards translated. 
In the meantime the Coffee Industry of Ceylon was menaced by 
the Leaf disease, which ultimately destroyed it, and broke the Oriental 
Bank. Mr. (afterwards Sir Daniel) Morris, who had attended the 
South Kensington course in 1876, had shown that the plants could 
be cleansed from the Hemileia by dusting them with a mixture of 
sulphur and lime. But they speedily were re-infected. The Ceylon 
Government therefore asked for an expert who would devote 
himself to a thorough investigation of the organism which caused 
the disease. On the nomination of Kew, Marshall Ward was 
appointed in 1878. The night before he started there was a meeting 
of the Linnean Society. Among those present were Marshall Ward, 
Sir Joseph Hooker, myself, Professor Balfour, who was going to 
Socotra, and I think Dr. Trimen, the Director of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya. The two last were going in the 
same ship with Marshall Ward. I remember that we all adjourned 
to the rooms of Professor Moseley at the University of London 
after the meeting. 
Marshall Ward solved his problem as far as it could be solved. 
He showed that the Hemileia was a Uredine, and that it was 
disseminated by the air-borne uredospores. Had the planters, as 
in Southern India, preserved forest-belts between their plantations, 
the uredospores might have been filtered out and the disease con¬ 
trolled. Marshall Ward had learnt to ride before his departure, 
and for two years he was indefatigable in visiting on horse-back the 
diseased districts. But the problem, though cleared up in its 
scientific aspect, remained as hopeless as before. The Ceylon 
