EDWARD GEORGE KENSIT 
By A. M. TUGWELL. 
“ To the memory of Edward George Kensit, Assistant in this Herbarium, 
1912 — 1915, who fell in action at Delville Wood, July 18th, 1916. 
“He volunteered for a dangerous mission; although wounded early in its 
execution, he carried out his instructions; painfully retracing his steps he 
gave the information required and fell dead. ‘ Omnibus his nivea cinguntur 
tempora vitta.’ ” 
Such the brief legend on the brass tablet in the Bolus Herbarium of the 
S.A. College, Capetown, fittingly summarising the climax of a strong clean 
life. 
Edward Kensit, the youngest of a large family, was born in March, 1879, 
his mother dying four months after. 
Nothing noteworthy happened to him until the Anglo-Boer War broke out, 
when he joined Brabant’s Horse, going right through that campaign and 
ending up in 1901 by entering the Yryburg Police. 
Here to him, nervously alive to the beauty of vast spaces, came the call 
of the desert and he followed the Voice. 
That Bechuanaland desert trading trip, albeit thickly set with privations, 
was to him a golden glory always ; but being the artist he was, needless to say 
he returned rich in all save money. In 1907 he set out on another trading 
trip : faring worse than before and his health breaking down completely, he 
returned home to be nursed. For the greater part of 1911 he was recuperating. 
In 1912, sufficiently restored, he joined the staff of the Bolus Herbarium 
where he remained doing splendid work both on a collecting trip with his 
friend St C. Caporn, which resulted in a fine haul of rich material for the 
Herbarium no less than for the National Botanic Gardens, and also in private 
and reliable investigation of the Order Leguminosae, until he left for England, 
a volunteer in the S.A. Infantry. 
One recalls his cheerfulness; at times when he was depressed, he needed 
but to see a friend in similar state and straightway his spirit would take the 
leap from self and he would be cheering the other, himself quite forgotten. 
One recalls too the marvellous finding sympathy he had, indeed in him 
it almost amounted to an instinct, for so surely as the needle points to the 
