396 
OBITUARY. 
We regret to announce the departure from this life of Thomas Andrew Knight, 
Esq., of Downton Castle, Herefordshire. Our notice of this gentleman is extracted 
from an article written, as Mr. Loudon justly observes, in an excellent spirit, by 
Dr. Lindley, and published in The Athenaeum. 
Mr. Knight was born at Wormsley Grange, near Hereford, Oct. 10, 1758, 
being the youngest son of a clergyman of the Church of England, whose father 
had amassed a large fortune in the iron trade. He lost his father early, was sent 
to school at nine years of age, and afterwards entered Baliol College, Oxford. 
He soon showed great powers of observation and reflection ; and acquired his first 
love of botanical science in the idle days previous to his entrance at Ludlow 
school. We follow Dr. Lindley in calling them “ idle”; though possibly, had 
his active mind been early vitiated by ordinary scholastic training, it might have 
been depressed beyond the power of subsequent good management. In 1795 
Mr. Knight began to be publicly known as a vegetable physiologist. “ The 
great object which he set before himself, and which he pursued through his long¬ 
life with undeviating steadiness of purpose, was utility. Mere curious specula¬ 
tions seem to have engaged his attention but little.” He accordingly studied to 
improve, by his indefatigable scientific researches, the various kinds of fruits and 
vegetables used at table, an object in which his labours have been crowned with 
perfect success; “ and if henceforward the English yeoman can command the 
garden luxuries that were once confined to the great and wealthy, it is to Mr. 
Knight, far more than to any other person, that the gratitude of the country is 
due.” In social life lie was full of benevolence, and his loss will be severely felt, 
not only by his family, but by his numerous tenantry and dependents ; and he 
bore with philosophic resignation one of the severest of trials—the loss of an only 
and much-beloved son. “ His political opinions were as free from prejudice as 
his scientific views ; his whole heart was with the Liberal party, of which he was 
all his life a strenuous supporter.—It is no exaggeration to add, that no living 
Man now before the world can be said to rank with him in that particular branch 
of science to which his whole life was devoted.” 
Mr, Knight’s services to various scientific Societies are well known. He con¬ 
tributed to them several valuable papers, and succeeded his friend Sir Joseph 
Banks in the presidency of the Horticultural Society.-^-He died in London, at 
the house of Mrs. Walpole, one of his daughters, after a short illness, on the 11th 
of May, 1838, in the 80th year of his age. 
