H. H. W. PEARSON, F.R.S., Sc.D. 
143 
climbed up a rocky slope on the summit of which Aloes were flourishing in 
a habitat sharply contrasted with that below, and from a still higher point 
we looked across a forest of Silver trees (Leucadendron argenteum) and beyond 
to the shores of the Cape Peninsula, a view that it would be hard to match 
in any other Garden. 
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” 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 Cape Times, “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 : “ 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 on 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 ‘Trooper Pearson’ which gives me some 
measure of satisfaction.” 
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 Guetales 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 Flora Capensis and 
the Flora of Tropical Africa respectively show 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 himseli. 
Pearson gave special attention to the examination of the desert floia of South- 
West Africa particularly from the point of view of its relationship to the 
floras of neighbouring regions. One of his aims in visiting the Karasbeig 
range, which rises from the level plateau of the Kalahari desert, was to 
search for clues to the past history of the South African floia. He al\\a\s 
arranged his routes according to a well considered plan of attack upon the 
