562 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 24, 188*. 
MR. W. T. THI8ELT0N DYER, C.M.G., F.R.S. 
A few weeks ago we published a portrait and sketch of the life of 
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the retiring Director of the Royal Gardens, 
Kew, and we now introduce to our readers Sir Joseph’s successor, Mr. 
W. T. Thiselton Dyer, whose name is well known in the annals cf botany 
and horticulture. It was generally expected that Mr. Dyer would have 
been called to occupy this important position. His devotion to science, 
and especially natural science, his notable antecedents, and his ten years’ 
probationary work as Assistant Director of the gardens, eminently fitted 
and recommended him for the appointment. The directorship of Kew 
is a post that requires of the holder a special training. It is one which 
no mere botanist, any more than no mere gardener, is capable of filling 
satisfactorily, but it requires a judicious combination of the two. These 
qualities are well met in Mr. Dyer, who, though eminently a man of 
science, has also a broad practical side which can be turned at any time 
in the direction where it is required. He knows that science without 
practice is dead, and that it is only when applied that it is really living. 
Mr. Dyer was born on the 28th of July, 1843, in Westminster, with which 
his family formerly held some official connection, but his early life was 
spent in Mayfair, where his fathor practised as a physician. In his youth 
he suffered from indifferent health, and in consequence made long visits 
to the house at Edmonton (then a rural village) of his maternal grand father, 
Thomas Firminger, LL.D., a man of considerable scientific attainments, 
who had been for fourteen years Principal Assistant at the Greenwich 
Observatory when Dr. Maskelyne was Astronomer Royal, and he was an 
intimate friend of Sir James South and other scientific men of that time. 
His mother was an ardent collector of British plants, and it is to her that 
he owes the formation of his botanical tastes, and we have heard Mr. Dyer 
say that one of his earliest recollections is trying to identify with her from 
Sir William Hooker’s admirable “ British Flora ” the species of Cheno- 
podium a,nd Atriplex, which abound in Middlesex. His uncle, the Rev. 
T. A. Firminger, longresident in India, was the author of a well-known 
manual of gardening for India, which has run into three editions. All 
the associations of his youth were therefore with mathematics and botany'; 
and his father being a member and for some years Chairman of the 
Apothecaries’ Society, it was his habit to carry home for him specimens 
of medicinal plants which were sent for the weekly examinations from the 
Chelsea Botanic Garden. This circumstance no doubt laid the foundation 
of the peculiar interest which Mr. Dyer has for pharmaceutical botany. 
Mr. Dyer’s early education was acquired at King’s College School, 
and it was at that time that the beginning was made of introducing science 
teaching into the school course. Lectures on Chemistry and Physics 
were given by Mr. Charles Tomlinson, F.R.S., and he has still a keen 
recollection of the pleasure and interest he derived from them. 
During the latter part of his school life he bestowed most attention on 
mathematical studies, and left with the first-class mathematical scholar¬ 
ship in 1861, the present Astronomer Royal being at the time somewhat 
his junior in the school. Here, too, he contracted a friendship with 
Dr. Trimen, now the worthy successor of Dr. Thwaites as director of the 
Royal Botanic Garden, Peradeniza, Ceylon, through the discovery in those 
school days of their common interest in botanical tastes. 
On leaving school Mr. Dyer was undecided whether to goto Cambridge 
or commence medical studies. Ultimately choosing the latter, he entered 
the medical department of King’s College in 1861 as Warneford scholar, 
and attended with great enthusiasm the lectures of Lionel Beale, who 
then stood in the front rank of the revived school of minute anatomy in 
England. He, we believe, was one of the first teachers who attempted to 
demonstrate, with an ingenious form of travelling microscope, the actual 
facts of histology to his class. Ad this is done now with admirable effect 
in the laboratory, but Lionel Beale’s attempts were, in their way, a revo¬ 
lution in teaching. William Allen Miller was then fully occupied with 
the new spectrum analysis, and freely introduced the new subject into his 
course; and to the clear and systematic teaching of his old friend 
Professor Bentley he owes his first accurate technical knowledge of 
botany. 
In 1863, his health having given way, by his father’s advice he aban¬ 
doned any farther attempt at studying for the medical profession. In the 
autumn of this year a Junior Studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, was 
offered for open competition, which he had the good fortune to obtain, a 
success he owed in great measure to his medical scientific instruction, and 
also to the diligent study of the late Dr. Carpenter’s “Comparative 
Physiology,’’ which is now generally recognised as having led the way for 
the modern methods of biological teaching. 
At Oxford Mr. Dyer resumed mathematical study, but he had lost 
ground too much to be able to accomplish the whole course of University 
reading, and he was quite content to take a second class in moderations in 
1865, and a second class in the final Mathematical School in 1867. The 
teaching of Professor Henry Smith in modem geometry, and of Sir Ben¬ 
jamin Brodie in modern chemistry, are features in his university life which 
he can always look back to with the keenest pleasure. After taking his 
B.A. degree in 1867, he obtained a First Class in the School of Physical 
Science, and then left the university. 
Shortly afterwards his father died rather suddenly, and he was thrown 
very much on his own resources. His first appointment was that of 
Professor of Natural History in the Agricultural College of Cirencester, 
and here his residence for two years among the Cotswold Hills was in 
every way of great benefit to him. Elected a member of the Cotswold 
Club he joined in excursions over a country which displays every geolo¬ 
gical formation from the Lower Tertian to the Upper Silurian, and this 
enabled him to see an epitome of the world’s history which is perhaps 
not to be found elsewhere. To his friend Mr. Church, who was then 
Professor of Chemistry at the College, and is now occupying a similar 
position in the Royal Academy, Mr. Dyer owes in no small degree an in¬ 
sight into the chemistry of vegetable nutrition. With the help of an old 
Kew man he had charge of a small botanic garden with an excellent col¬ 
lection of British plants. During his stay at Cirencester in 1869, Sir 
Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker, though knowing little of him personally at that 
time, offered him the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Garden of the 
Mauritius, on the death of Dr. Mellor, in Australia ; baton account of the 
delicate state of his health he regretfully declined it. In this year he 
edited, with his friend Professor Church, the English edition of “ How 
Crops Grow,” and published with Dr. Trimen the “ Flora of Middlesex,” 
for which they had been steadily collecting material since their school 
days. 
In 1870 Mr. Dyer became Professor of Botany in the Royal College of 
Science for Ireland in succession to Dr. Wyville Thomson. _ Mr. Dyer 
says, “ I owe a great deal to my residence in Dublin, especially to my 
friend Mr. William Archer, F.R.S., Secretary of the Dublin Microsco¬ 
pical Club, and now Librarian of the National Library of Ireland. He 
introduced me to the fascinating microscopical Fauna and Flora of the 
Irish bogs. But, above all, I murt ever commemorate the memory of Dr. 
David Moore, of the Royal Botanic Garden, Glasnevin, near which I took 
up my abode. He allowed me free access to all its treasures, and a larger 
experience only makes me to more fully appreciate the skill to which 
difficulties of cultivation seemed to have no meaning.” 
Part of his official duties in Dublin was to deliver a short course of 
popular lectures. Reports of these appeared in some of the Irish papers, 
and were reprinted in the columns of the Gardeners' Chronicle. This 
circumstance brought him to the notice of the Council of the Royal Horti¬ 
cultural Society, from whom he received an invitation to join the staff as 
Professor of Botany, with a seat on the Chiswick Board of Direction. This 
offer was accepted, and he returned to London in 1871. At the same 
time he was asked by Dr. Hooker to assist him in the “ Flora of British 
India,” and he worked up the Dipterocarpese and a few minor orders con¬ 
tained in the first volume. Soon after this the affairs of the Royal Horti¬ 
cultural Society became involved by the partisanship of rival interests in 
the Society. The purely horticultural element of which it was composed 
found that a strong party existed, consisting chiefly of the residents in the 
neighbourhood of South Kensington Garden, who were desirous of con¬ 
verting the Society to their own uses, and instead of maintaining it as a 
society for the advancement of horticulture, they endeavoured to alter its 
character, and succeeded for a time in expelling the old Council and 
appropriating it as a place of amusement and recreation. In consequence of 
this the Society became disorganised, and changes were made which for a 
time reduced the administration to the level of a committee of manage¬ 
ment of a London square ; in this catastrophe Mr. Dyer was, of course, 
unable to fulfil all the hopes with which he entered on his work at 
South Kensington. “ But,” says Mr. Dyer, “ I certainly owe much to my 
periodical visits to Chiswick, and I saw under the skilful management of 
Mr. Barron the side of horticulture which supplemented what I had seen 
at Glasnevin. The meetings of the Chiswick Board brought me into inti¬ 
mate relationship with the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Dr. Hogg, and Mr. 
Moore, and in such company it was an advantage to be inexperienced." 
In 1873 Mi. Dyer was invited by the Science and Art Department 
under which he had worked at Dublin to conduct a course of instruction 
to teachers in what is now the Normal School of Science at South Kensing¬ 
ton. In this he was assisted by his friend Mr. Lawson, the late Professor 
of Botany at Oxford, and now director of the Cinchona plantations of the 
Madras Government. They had the use of Professor Huxley’s convenient 
and well-appointed laboratory, and here they entered upon a couree of in¬ 
struction which embraced the leading morphological facts of every import¬ 
ant type in the vegetable kingdom ; in fact, they resolved to adopt 
exactly the same plan of work as Professor Huxley in his own teaching 
had found convenient for the animal side of morphology. This we 
believe was the first time that any attempt had been made in this country 
to give an extended course of botanical instruction of this kind. This was 
an experiment which was repeated at regular intervals during the next 
few years. It gradually took a more systematic shape, and first at the 
hands of Mr. Bower, now Regius Professor of Botany in the University of 
Glasgow, and then by Dr. Scott, it is likely to settle down to a permanent 
system of instruction. 
In 1875 the Government revived the office of Assistant Director of 
the Royal Gardens, and Mr. Dyer was offered the appointment. Haying 
taken up his residence at Kew two years previously, he had opportunities 
of becoming acquainted with the work of the establishment, and he 
accepted the offer, though with some misgiving, as it seemed to close the 
door finally to a teaching career, which he then had most at heart, 
What the schools may have lost in this resolution of Mr. Dyer the 
public service has gained, for we know of no one who could have 
more efficiently administered the department during the time he 
held the post of Assistant Director than he has done. We now look 
forward with confident expectation to the future, feeling assured that Her 
Majesty’s Government have made an appointment which will tend to 
sustain the reputation of the Gardens justly acquired under the masterly 
direction of the two Hookers—father and son—and now confided to the 
son-in-law of the latter. 
Mr. Dyer is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in consideration of his 
admirable management of the Colonial Department of the Kew establish¬ 
ment, Her Majesty conferred upon him the distinction of Companion of 
the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St, George. 
Some account of the great establishment placed under Mr. Dyer' J 
