described being _S. vascularis_, since identified with _Lepidodendron
selaginoides_, or _L. vasculare_, if we maintain Binney's specific name.
Binney was not a great theoriser. His object was rather to provide
material for the botanists, he being essentially a geologist. This he
did admirably, for his monograph is illustrated by magnificent drawings
from the hand of Fitch, the famous botanical artist.
Binney stood more under the influence of Brongniart than did his
successor Williamson.
[Illustration: _Plate XXI_ WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON (1876)]
I now go on to my principal subject. Williamson's father, John
Williamson, originally a gardener, was well known for his researches
on the Natural History of the Yorkshire coast, and was for 27 years
curator of the Scarborough Museum. Previously to that, John Williamson
kept a private museum of his own, and it was in the room next to this
that William Crawford Williamson was born on November 24, 1816. John
Williamson's cousin, William Bean, was also an active local naturalist,
known especially for his work on the Yorkshire Fossil Flora; the genus
_Beania_ is named after him.
Our Williamson's mother, born Elizabeth Crawford, was the eldest of 13
children of a Scarborough jeweller and lapidary. Young Williamson used
to spend much time in the Crawford's workshop, watching them cutting
and working with the diamond the agates from the gravels of the coast.
"A youthful training," he says, "which became of the utmost value to me
more than a third of a century later, when scientific research required
me to devote much of my own time to similar work[121]."
In 1826 the famous William Smith and his wife established themselves in
the Williamson's house, and stayed there for two years. Williamson's
early recollections of the "Father of English Geology" must have been
inspiring. His father was also a friend and correspondent of Sir
Roderick Murchison.
The appearance of Phillips' classic volume, _Illustrations of the
Geology of Yorkshire_, in 1829, gave young Williamson his first
introduction to true scientific work. His father at once set to work
to name from this book the fossils he collected, and his son was
called in to help. "My evenings throughout a long winter were devoted
to the detested labour of naming these miserable stones."--"Pursuing
this uncongenial task gave me in my 13th year a thorough practical
familiarity with the palaeontological treasures of Eastern Yorkshire.
This early acquisition happily moulded the entire course of my future
life[122]."
Those were not the days of the half-educated. Young Williamson, in
addition to his special scientific training, had the advantage of a
classical education, at schools both in England and France. The French
part of his education was not altogether a success, for most of the
boys at the school were English.
Passing through London on his return he had breakfast with Sir Roderick
Murchison, who took him to the Geological Society. This was in March
1832, when he was little more than 15. Certainly his entrance into
the scientific world was made easy for him. Would it be made equally
easy now for a boy in a similar position? In the same year, 1832,
Williamson was articled to Mr Thomas Weddell, a medical practitioner at
Scarborough. While with him, he continued to pursue Natural History as
a recreation--bird-collecting for example, and also botany. He writes,
"I was then forming a collection of the plants of Eastern Yorkshire, as
well as trying to master the natural classification, which was already
beginning to supplant the Linnean method, so long the one universally
adopted[123]."
A memoir on the rare birds of Yorkshire was communicated to the
Zoological Society of London--an early work though not quite the
earliest. While with Mr Weddell, Williamson contributed a number of
descriptions and drawings of oolitic plants to Lindley and Hutton's
_Fossil Flora_. He tells us how the drawings had to be made in the
evenings on Mr Weddell's kitchen table. The plants he illustrated had
for the most part been collected by his father and John Bean in a small
estuarine deposit at Gristhorpe Bay. More than 30 species were thus
recorded by him.
He also made diagrams to illustrate some lectures on Vegetable
Physiology given by Mr Weddell at the Mechanics' Institution. It is
rather surprising to find that such a course was given in a country
town during the early 'thirties. Probably the learning displayed was
not very deep, for Mrs Marcet's _Conversations_ seem to have been the
chief authority.
In 1834-36 Williamson published important papers, determining
geological zones, from the Lias to the Cornbrash, by means of their
fossils; subsequently he extended his zoning work up to the Oxford Clay.
The opening of the Gristhorpe tumulus in July 1834, when a skeleton,
of the Bronze Age, was found in a coffin fashioned out of the trunk
of an oak-tree, gave occasion to Williamson's one contribution to
archaeology. His memoir was reprinted in the _Literary Gazette_
for October 18, 1834 (still before he was 18). This was through Dr
Buckland's influence; in a letter to Williamson he said, "I am happy to
have been instrumental in bringing before the public a name to which I
look forward as likely to figure in the annals of British Science." A
second and third edition of this paper were called for.
In September 1835 Williamson was appointed curator of the Museum of the
Manchester Natural History Society, and so began his long connection
with the great northern town, lasting down to 1892. In those days the
interest in the vigorous young science of geology was extraordinarily
keen, and there was great activity, especially among the naturalists
of the North, many of whom were working men. Williamson, about 1838,
gave a course of lectures on geology at various northern towns,
and thus raised funds for his removal to London, to continue his
medical studies. It is interesting to find that Williamson, while at
Manchester, helped to nurse John Dalton in his last illness.
While curator at Manchester, Williamson saw the rise of Binney as a
geologist.
His remarks on the local study of botany at that time are interesting.
"The botanical interests of the district were chiefly in the hands of
the operative community. The hills between Lancashire and Yorkshire
swarmed with botanical and floricultural societies, who met on Sundays,
the only day when it was possible to do so[124]." Some of these men
must have had an excellent education, as shown by the good English they
wrote, as for example Richard Buxton, a poor working man, author of a
standard _Botanical Guide_. The society to which Buxton belonged had,
in 1849, existed for nearly a century. It may be doubted whether an
equal enthusiasm for science still prevails in that or in any part of
England.
In September 1840 Williamson went to London to complete his medical
training, and entered University College, making the acquaintance of
Prof. Lindley, who had for so long known him only as a correspondent
and collaborator.
Soon afterwards he was offered the post of naturalist to the Niger
expedition, which he refused, and, as it turned out fortunately, for
the journey proved disastrous. Stanger, of _Stangeria_ fame, took his
place.
In 1842, having then returned to Manchester and started in practice,
Williamson made his first attempt at microscopic work, having become
interested in the Foraminifera of the Chalk. He also began to examine
Confervae, Diatoms and Desmids, finding perhaps, as others have done,
that the Fresh-water Algae give the best introduction to microscopic
biology.
The work on Foraminifera became one of the most important in
Williamson's career. In 1845 he wrote his valuable paper on microscopic
organisms in the mud of the Levant. His work in this field culminated
in his monograph of Foraminifera, issued by the Ray Society in 1857.
In 1851 Williamson was appointed Professor of Natural History, which
included Zoology, Botany and Geology, at the new Owens College,
Manchester. He tells us, "The botanical portion of my work was that
for which I was least prepared"--"of the German language I was utterly
ignorant[125]." The almost insuperable difficulties of a triple
Professorship were at first met by spreading the complete course over
two years, a sensible plan which was rendered impracticable by the more
rigid requirements of examinations. It was not, however, till 1872 that
a division of the duties of the chair took place; Williamson was then
relieved of the geological teaching by the appointment of Prof. Boyd
Dawkins; in 1880 the zoology was taken over by the late Prof. Milnes
Marshall, Williamson thus retaining the very subject, botany, with
which he had originally been the least familiar.
[Illustration: Plate XXII
Vascular system of stem of _Lepidodendron selaginoides_ in transverse
section. _Drawn by Williamson_]
In addition to his peculiarly arduous duties as Professor, Williamson
was a great populariser of science. He was one of the first two members
of the Owens' staff to start, in 1854, evening classes for working
men. He gave numerous scientific lectures at the Royal Institution in
London and elsewhere, his greatest work in this field being his
lectures for the Gilchrist Trustees. He mentions that from 1874 to 1880
he delivered 158 of these lectures in 61 towns, and he continued this
work with equal activity for another 10 years. He was a vigorous and
effective lecturer, who always interested his audience; he illustrated
his lectures by bold diagrams, drawn by his own hand. In order to form
any idea of Williamson's many-sided activity it must be remembered
that he was all the time engaged in active medical practice, both
general and special, for he was well known as an aurist. Yet he always
found time for fruitful original research, often of the most laborious
character.
Prof. Judd says, in a letter written to me in February 1911:
"I have often been struck by the fact that Williamson, appointed to an
impossible Professorship of Zoology, Botany and Geology, managed to
initiate _great movements_ in connection with _each of these sciences_.
"In Geology he was clearly the pioneer in the subdivision of formations
into zones each characterised by an assemblage of fossils--Ammonites
playing the most important part.... But Williamson did another great
service to Geology.... Sorby visited Williamson at Manchester and
learned the art of making sections which he applied with such success
to the study of igneous and other rocks, becoming the 'Father of
Micropetrography.'
"In Zoology, Williamson initiated the work done in the study of
_deep-sea deposits_, by his remarkable memoir on the mud of the
Levant, in 1845, when he was 29 years old. This led to his study of
the Foraminifera (especially by the aid of thin sections) and to his
monograph in the Ray Society on that group....
"Of his contributions to Botany through his sections of 'Coal balls' I
need say nothing."
Prof. Judd makes no reference here to the papers which obtained for
Williamson his F.R.S. in 1854. These embodied his researches on the
development of bone and teeth, in which he demonstrated that the teeth
are dermal appendages homologous with the scales of fishes. This
important work dated back to 1842 and was inspired by his enthusiasm
for the then novel cell-theory of Schleiden and Schwann.
The interest aroused by this investigation is shown by the fact that
the great German anatomist Kölliker travelled to Manchester, about the
year 1851, to see Williamson's preparations.
As regards Williamson's work as a botanist, in which we are chiefly
interested in this course, his best contribution to recent botany was
no doubt his investigation of _Volvox_, published in 1851 and 1852,
in which he traced the development of the young spheres and the mode
of connection of their cells, anticipating the results of much later
researches.
He was a great lover of living plants; his garden and greenhouses at
Fallowfield, his Manchester home, were of remarkable interest, and he
was a keen gardener. At the British Association Meeting of 1887 one of
his guests said that "most of the distinguished botanists of Europe
and America were in the garden, and not one but who had seen something
growing he never saw before[126]." Insectivorous plants and the rarer
vascular cryptogams were specially well represented. It was from his
private garden that his classes were supplied with specimens.
As we have seen, fossil plants engaged Williamson's attention in his
earliest years, when as a mere boy he contributed to Lindley and
Hutton's _Fossil Flora_.
His first important independent work in this field was his paper
"On the Structure and Affinities of the Plants hitherto known as
Sternbergiae" (1851), in which he proved, for the first time, that
these curious fossils, resembling a _rouleau_ of coins, were casts
of the discoid pith of _Dadoxylon_, or, as we should now say, of
Cordaiteae--the first step in the reconstruction of this early
gymnospermous family. This investigation, to which he appears to have
been led almost accidentally, through some good specimens coming into
his hands, brought him back, as he says, to his old subject of fossil
botany. It was long, however, before he got fairly started on his great
course of investigations on Carboniferous plants.
In the meantime he had returned to the Yorkshire Oolitic plants and,
about 1847, published a paper in the Proceedings of the Yorkshire
Philosophical Society, "On the Scaly Vegetable Heads or collars
from Runswick Bay, supposed to belong to the _Zamia gigas_." His
full paper, in which he maintained the Cycadean affinities of the
flower-like fossils, was written soon afterwards, but met with a
series of misfortunes, and was not finally published till 1870, in the
_Transactions of the Linnean Society_, before which body it had been
read in 1868. Williamson was admittedly right in connecting the floral
organs with the so-called _Zamia_ foliage, and his interpretation of
the complicated structure was as good as was possible in the then state
of knowledge. The true nature of these fossils, now known by the name
_Williamsonia_, given them by Mr Carruthers, could only be understood
at a much later date in the light of Dr Wieland's famous researches
on the American Bennettiteae, and has quite recently been made clear
in a memoir by Prof. Nathorst. Perhaps, even now, some points remain
doubtful.
Early in the fifties Williamson made some rough sections of a Calamite
which came into his hands, and this was the beginning of his most
characteristic line of work. A remarkable internal cast of a Calamite,
figured by Lyell in his _Manual of Geology_ in 1855, led to a
correspondence with M. Grand'Eury, now so famous as the veteran French
palaeobotanist. Williamson at that time had no intention of entering
on the serious study of Carboniferous plants, for Binney was already
in the field. Grand'Eury's letter, however, caused him to look up his
old sections, which he found differed from the Calamitean stems figured
by Binney. Matters for a time moved slowly, and Williamson's specimen
was only described in 1868 in the _Manchester Memoirs_. This fossil,
which he named _Calamopitus_, is now known as _Arthrodendron_, and is
a distinct type of Calamarian stem, intermediate between the common
_Calamites_ or _Arthropitys_, and the more elaborate _Calamodendron_ of
the Upper Coal Measures.
Williamson was now fairly started on his Carboniferous work. His
first memoir on the Organisation of the Fossil Plants of the Coal
Measures was communicated to the Royal Society on November 11, 1870.
It is amusing to find that the secretaries objected to the memoir
being called Part I, since it bound the society to publish a Part II!
Nineteen Parts were published, the last in 1893.
The first memoir was on the Calamites, and controversy at once broke
out. Williamson was from the first impressed by the manifest occurrence
of exogenous, or, as we should now call it, secondary growth, both in
the Calamites and the Lepidodendreae, groups which he was convinced
were cryptogamic. The controversy with the great French school, headed
by the illustrious Brongniart, is well known. As Williamson put it:
"The fight was always the same; was Brongniart right or wrong when
he uttered his dogma, that if the stem of a fossil plant contained a
secondary growth of wood, the product of a cambium layer, it could
not possibly belong to the cryptogamic division of the vegetable
kingdom?[127]"
In England, however, the dispute was on different lines. "In August of
1871," says Williamson, "the British Association met at Edinburgh. At
that meeting I brought forward the subject of cambiums and secondary
woods in Cryptogams, with the result that my views were rejected by
every botanist in the room." There followed a controversy in the pages
of _Nature_, which is of some interest, as showing the state of opinion
in England at that time. Williamson tells us in his autobiography the
principle by which he was guided in his work: "I determined not to
look at the writings of any other observer until I had studied every
specimen in my cabinet, and arrived at my own conclusions as to what
they taught." In spite of this excellent rule it is probable that he
was at first unconsciously influenced by the views of Brongniart,
which may have led him to attach too much _systematic_ importance to
the occurrence of secondary growth. At any rate he proposed at the
Edinburgh meeting "to separate the vascular Cryptogams into two groups,
the one comprehending Equisetaceae, Lycopodiaceae and Isoëtaceae, to
be termed the Cryptogamiae Exogenae, linking the Cryptogams with the
true exogens through the Cycads; the other called the Cryptogamiae
Endogenae, to comprehend the Ferns, which will unite the Cryptogams
with the Endogens through the Palmaceae[128]."
[Illustration: Plate XXIII
Root of _Calamites_ (_Astromyelon Williamsonis_) in transverse section.
_Drawn by Williamson_]
It is curious to note in passing that his main divisions, so far as
vascular Cryptogams are concerned, correspond to the Lycopsida and
Pteropsida of Prof. Jeffrey, though the suggested relation to the
higher plants would not be accepted by any modern botanist. In spite of
Williamson's tactical error in weighting himself with a doubtful scheme
of classification, and in spite also of a faulty terminology, it is
easy to see now that he had the best of the controversy, for he knew
the facts about the structure of the Carboniferous Cryptogams, which
his opponents, at that time, did not. They stuck to generalities, and
those who take the trouble to rake the ashes of this dead controversy
will at least learn that dogmatism is not confined to theology!
An interesting point is that Williamson at that time spoke of
Brongniart almost as an ally[129]. The conviction that the old
Lepidodendrons and Calamites were "exogenous" then seemed to him of
greater importance even than his belief that they were Cryptogams. The
English opposition, however, was never really formidable, and so a
change of front became necessary, to meet the attacks of the powerful
French school. Williamson was an energetic disputant; not content with
his numerous English publications, he published, in 1882, an article
in the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, entitled "Les Sigillaires
et les Lepidodendrées." This was translated into French for him by
his colleague Marcus Hartog, whose assistance he greatly valued. He
describes this vigorous polemical treatise as "flung like a bombshell
among my opponents."
In time they came over, one by one, to his views, and even the most
redoubtable of the French champions Bernard, Renault, before the close
of his life, had made very considerable concessions to Williamson's
side of the question. There is no need to dwell on the controversy;
every student now knows that the Club-mosses, the Horse-tails and the
Sphenophylls of Palaeozoic times formed abundant secondary tissues
homologous with those of a Gymnosperm or a Dicotyledon; the case of the
Sphenophylls shows that the character was not limited to arborescent
plants then any more than it is among Dicotyledons at the present
day. At the same time, as Williamson maintained, these groups of
plants were, broadly speaking, cryptogamic. On the other hand it
has been said by a distinguished botanist that in the Fern-series
secondary growth came in together with the seed. This is not strictly
correct, but it is true that the plants such as _Lyginodendron_, which
Williamson in his later publications cited as Ferns with secondary
growth, have turned out to be seed-bearing. Even among the Lycopods a
certain proportion of the Lepidodendreae bore organs closely analogous
to seeds. These partial concessions, which may now gracefully be made
to the old Brongniartian creed, do not however really affect the
importance of Williamson's results, which Count Solms-Laubach has
well summed up in the following words: "It was thus made evident by
Williamson that cambial growth in thickness is a character which has
appeared repeatedly in the most various families of the vegetable
kingdom, and was by no means acquired for the first time by the
Phanerogamic stock. This is a general botanical result of the greatest
importance and the widest bearing. In this conclusion Palaeontology
has, for the first time, spoken the decisive word in a purely botanical
question[130]."
To attempt a review of Williamson's work in fossil botany would
be to write a treatise on the Carboniferous Flora. In every
group--Calamites, Sphenophylls, Lycopods, Ferns, Pteridosperms,
Gymnosperms--his researches are among the most important documents of
the palaeobotanist, and to a great extent constitute the basis of our
present knowledge. At the time he wrote, the wealth of his material
was absolutely unrivalled, and its abundance was only equalled by the
astonishing energy and skill with which he worked it out.
As regards the Calamites, he demonstrated, to use his own words, "the
unity of type existing among the British Calamites," abolishing the
false distinction between Calamiteae and Calamodendreae.
Among the Sphenophyllums (although there was at first some confusion in
his nomenclature) he gave the first correct account of the anatomy, and
of the organization of the cone.
[Illustration: Plate XXIV
Cone of _Calamostachys Binneyana_; sporangia and sporangiophores.
_Drawn by Williamson_]
Concerning the Lycopods, the greater part of our knowledge is due
to him. He described the structure in ten species referred to
_Lepidodendron_, besides other allied forms, and placed our knowledge
of the comparative anatomy, once for all, on a broad and secure basis.
His great monograph of _Stigmaria_, by some considered his best work,
is still our chief authority for the subterranean organs.
In the Ferns he made important contributions to our knowledge of
the group now familiar to botanists as the Primofilices of Arber.
In particular his account of the plant now known as _Ankyropteris
corrugata_ is still among the best we possess of any member of the
family.
In Pteridosperms, to use the modern name, Williamson may fairly be
called the discoverer of the important family Lyginodendreae. He
appreciated their intermediate position, speaking of them, in 1887, as
"possibly the generalised ancestors of both Ferns and Cycads."
As regards both Pteridosperms and Gymnosperms proper, attention may
be specially called to his work on isolated seeds, in which he was
surpassed by Brongniart alone. This field of investigation, long
neglected, has lately been revived with striking results.
I hope that all students of fossil botany will have at least turned
over the pages and the plates of Williamson's works, for only by
inspection of the original memoirs can any idea be gained of his vast
services to our science.
His remarkable skill as a draughtsman (for all his memoirs are
illustrated by his own hand) is not always done justice to in the
published reproductions as the fine examples of his original drawings,
so kindly lent for the lecture by Mrs Williamson, will show[131]. At
the time when Williamson's main work was in progress--from 1870 to
1892--geologists were probably more appreciative of its value than
botanists. Happily, in spite of occasional trouble with Referees, none
of his work was lost, the Royal Society going steadily through with all
the nineteen memoirs which were entrusted to them.
The one botanist, who, up to the year 1890, estimated Williamson's work
at its full value was Count Solms-Laubach, who makes the honourable
boast that he knew Williamson's collection as no one else did.
Williamson's writings are not easy reading, especially for the modern
botanical student, for the terminology is often unfamiliar, and the
arrangement of the matter unsystematic.
It would be out of place to enter on a criticism of details, but it
is necessary to call attention to the one serious mistake which ran
through much of Williamson's work, though at the last he to a great
extent corrected it himself. He was always too ready to interpret
specimens of the same fossil plant which differed in size and
anatomical complexity, as developmental stages of one and the same
organ. Such differences among fossils are more often due to the order
of the branch on the plant, or to the level at which a section is cut.
This error led to some mistaken, and indeed impossible views of the
process of development. I mention this partly because I have noticed
the same fundamental mistake in the work of much more modern writers.
"We are none of us infallible--not even the youngest of us," and among
the latest fossil-botany papers I have read, I have detected the very
same confusion between differences of size and differences of age,
which constitutes the most serious blemish in Williamson's writings.
As is well known, Williamson in his latest independent work
corrected, as regards the Lepidodendrons, on the basis of a laborious
re-investigation, the chief mistake he had made as to their process of
growth[132]; he thus displayed an openness of mind worthy of a great
naturalist.
I first saw Williamson on February 16, 1883, when I attended his
Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution, "On some anomalous
Oolitic and Palaeozoic Forms of Vegetation." I did not, however, make
his acquaintance till six years later, when we met at the British
Association Meeting at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1889. This led to a
visit to his house in company with Prof. Bower; it was on March 8,
1890, that I first had a sight of his collection. I find the entry in
my diary: "Spent 7 hours over fossils, especially _Lyginodendron_ and
_Lepidodendron_, preparations magnificent." I at once became an ardent
convert to the cult of fossil plants to which I had hitherto been
indifferent, though I must in fairness admit that Count Solms-Laubach's
_Einleitung_ had done something to prepare the way. I well remember
the state of enthusiasm in which I returned home from Manchester. A
subsequent visit confirmed me in the faith, but it was some little
time before I put my convictions into practice. In 1892 Williamson,
then in his 76th year, resigned the Manchester Professorship and came
to live near London. In the same year I migrated to Kew, and it was
agreed that we should work in concert, an arrangement which received
every encouragement from the then Director, Thiselton-Dyer. Williamson
first came to the Jodrell Laboratory on Friday, December 2, 1892. Then,
and on many later visits, he carried a satchel over his shoulder,
crammed with the treasures of his collection. For some months he came
pretty regularly once a week, afterwards less often. On these visits we
discussed the work I had done on the sections during the interval, and
sometimes our discussions were decidedly lively. In the end, however,
we always managed to come to a satisfactory agreement. Our first joint
paper (_Calamites_, _Calamostachys_ and _Sphenophyllum_) was sent
off to the Royal Society, rather more than a year from the start, on
December 29, 1893.
During the early part of 1894 Williamson came occasionally to Kew, and
our discussions were renewed, this time chiefly on _Lyginodendron_. Our
second paper (Roots of Calamites) was despatched on October 30, 1894.
After a considerable interval Williamson again visited Kew, on December
12, 1894, when we started on his _Lepidodendron_ sections, a subject on
which we never published in conjunction. His last visit was on January
7, 1895. A few days later his health broke down, and though there were
many fluctuations he was never able to come to the laboratory again.
I saw him last, at his own house, on June 4th. On the 13th I read our
joint paper on _Lyginodendron_ and _Heterangium_ at the Royal Society;
on the 23rd he passed peacefully away.
If Williamson could have lived it would, I think, have given him great
pleasure to see the success, in his own country, of the work which he
inaugurated and the progress of the subject to which he devoted the
last 25 years of his life. I am happy to believe that he felt in the
evening of his days, that the period of comparative neglect through
which his work had passed, was at an end. For myself, I may say that my
work, since I knew Williamson, owes its inspiration to him. But quite
apart from our scientific relations it is a great privilege to have
known him. Though his many-sided activity, as physician, professor,
popular lecturer, geologist, zoologist, botanist and artist involved
an amount of work which to us of a less strenuous generation is almost
inconceivable, Williamson was as far as possible from being the mere
student. His personality was intensely human. He was a man of most
decided likes and dislikes; his conversation was often brilliant, and
sometimes vigorous to an almost startling degree.
The grand old race of all-round naturalists found in Williamson its
worthy culmination, and we can only regret that, from the nature of the
case, he can have no equal successor[133].
FOOTNOTES:
[119] Since these words were spoken the veteran leader of English
Botany has passed away. A notice of Sir Joseph's career will be found
in this volume, and the present writer has given some account of
his work on fossil plants in an _Anniversary Address to the Linnean
Society_, May 24th, 1912.
[120] The portrait of Henry Witham is from the original picture in
the possession of the Salvin family, at Croxdale; a photograph of the
picture was kindly obtained for me by Mr Philip Witham.
[121] _Reminiscences of a Yorkshire Naturalist_, p. 6.
[122] _Reminiscences_, p. 12.
[123] _Reminiscences_, p. 33.
[124] _Reminiscences_, p. 78.
[125] _Reminiscences_, p. 136.
[126] _Reminiscences_, p. 190.
[127] _Reminiscences_, p. 203.
[128] _Nature_, Vol. IV., 1871, p. 357.
[129] _Loc. cit._, p. 409.
[130] _Nature_, Vol. LII. 1895, p. 441.
[131] Three characteristic figures from these originals have been
reproduced for this volume (Plates 22-24).
[132] Williamson, "On the light thrown upon the question of the Growth
and Development of the Carboniferous Arborescent Lepidodendra by a
study of the details of their Organisation." _Mem. and Proc. Manchester
Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Ser. IV. Vol. IX. 1895.
[133] The portrait of Williamson is from a photograph kindly lent by
Mrs Williamson, and taken, as she informs me, at Torquay in or about
1876, when he was about 60.
[Illustration: _Plate XXV_ HARRY MARSHALL WARD (1895)]
HARRY MARSHALL WARD
1854-1906
BY SIR WILLIAM THISELTON-DYER
Training at South Kensington--Cambridge--Germany--investigates
coffee disease in Ceylon--his early investigations--appointment
to Manchester and association with Williamson--Ward's
brilliance as an investigator--Cooper's Hill--investigation
of lily disease--leguminous root tubercles--symbiosis
and the ginger-beer plant--the Croonian Lecture--the
bacteriology of water--bactericidal action of light--Ward's
"law of doubling"--appointment to Cambridge--mycopiasm
controversy--infection and immunity--physiological varieties of
Rusts--bridgeing species--illness and death--his record as an
investigator--personal characteristics.
Harry Marshall Ward, eldest son of Francis Marshall Ward, was born in
Hereford, March 21, 1854, but he came of a Lincolnshire stock, settled
for some time in Nottingham. From unavoidable causes he left school at
14, but afterwards continued his education by attending evening classes
organised under the Science and Art Department. To that Department,
he owed indirectly the opportunity of a useful and brilliant career.
His means were small, and his earliest aim was to qualify as a science
teacher. He was admitted to a course of instruction for teachers in
training given by Prof. Huxley in 1874-5. Although he must have derived
from it a sound insight into the principles of zoology, the subject
does not seem to have had any permanent attraction for him.
In the summer of 1857 Ward came under my hands in a course of
instruction in botany which I conducted with Prof. Vines in the Science
Schools at South Kensington, and from this time onwards we were in
intimate relations to the close of his life. I can best tell the story
as it came under my eyes. It contains much that could not easily be
dealt with in any other way.
It was soon apparent that we had got hold of a man of exceptional
ability. It must be confessed that the atmosphere was stimulating, and
the conditions under which the teaching was carried on necessitated
its being given at high pressure. I remember that on one occasion
Ward fainted at his work, from no other cause, I think, than
over-excitement. In the autumn of the same year he went for one session
to Owens College, Manchester, with the object of continuing his general
education. I learn that he carried off the prizes in every subject that
he took up.
In the succeeding year I was glad to avail myself of the assistance of
Ward as demonstrator in a subsequent course at South Kensington, which
I undertook with Prof. Vines. Later in the year he became a candidate
for and secured an open scholarship at Christ's College, where Vines
himself was then a Fellow, and went into residence in October, 1876.
Ward took full advantage of his opportunities at Cambridge, and
attended the teaching of Sir Michael Foster in physiology and of
Prof. F. M. Balfour in comparative anatomy. The sound and fundamental
conceptions which he acquired from the former manifestly influenced his
work throughout life. He took a first class in botany in the Natural
Science Tripos in 1879. His first published paper was the result of
work in the same year in the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew. In this,
which was published in the _Proceedings of the Linnean Society_, he
seriously criticised and corrected that of Vesque on the embryo-sac of
Phanerogams.
As was customary with our young botanists, Ward went to Germany for
a short time, for purposes of study and to strengthen his knowledge
of the language. He worked at Würzburg with Sachs, whose lectures
on the physiology of plants he afterwards translated in 1887. There
he continued his study of the embryo-sac in Orchideae, as Sachs
subsequently testified, "zu meiner vollsten Zufriedenheit."
Before the end of the year Ward was appointed on the recommendation of
Kew to proceed to Ceylon for two years as Government Cryptogamist to
investigate the leaf-disease in coffee. The history of this malady
is almost unique in vegetable pathology. A native fungus which had
eluded scientific observation, and must therefore have maintained an
inconspicuous and limited existence on some native host-plant, found
a wider opportunity on the Arabian coffee plant and fell upon it as a
devastating scourge. It was first detected in 1869 on a single estate;
in 1873 there was probably none in the island entirely free from it. Mr
(since Sir Daniel) Morris had shown that the plants could be cleansed
by dusting them with a mixture of sulphur and lime. But the remedy
proved of no avail as the plants speedily became re-infected. Morris
had been transferred to another appointment in the West Indies and
Ward's duty was to take up the investigation. This he accomplished
exhaustively. He showed that the fungus (_Hemileia vastatrix_) was one
of the Uredineae and that infection was produced by the wind-borne
uredospores. Had the planters, as in Southern India, left forest belts
between their plantations, the spores might have been filtered out
and the disease controlled. As it was it spread like an unchecked
conflagration. Ward also discovered the teleutospores; nothing has been
added to our knowledge of its life-history beyond what he obtained. The
result of his investigations was given in three official reports and in
papers contributed in 1882 to the Linnean Society and the _Quarterly
Journal of Microscopical Science_. It was no blame to him that his work
led to no practical result. The mischief admitted of no remedy. The
coffee-planting industry of Ceylon was destroyed and the Oriental Bank
succumbed in the general ruin. Leaf disease has now extended to every
coffee-growing country in the Old World from Natal to Fiji.
In a tropical country leaves supply a substratum to a little flora of
their own, consisting of organisms partly algal, partly fungal, in
their affinity. Ward, who had already developed his characteristic
habit of never neglecting any point incidental to a research,
carefully studied them, in order both to ascertain how far their
presence affected the health of the leaf itself and to work out their
life-history. The outcome was three important papers. One on Meliola,
an obscure genus of tropical epiphyllous fungi, belonging to the
Pyrenomycetes, was published in the _Philosophical Transactions_
in 1883. Bornet's classical memoir published in 1851 had been the
authority on the subject. Ward was able to fill up "large gaps in
the knowledge of important details." Another paper published in the
_Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science_ in 1882 on an Asterina
illuminates an allied organism. But the crown of all Ward's Ceylon
work was the splendid memoir on a Tropical Epiphyllous Lichen which
was published by the Linnean Society in 1883. In this he, I think,
cleared up much that was obscure in the _Mycoidea parasitica_ described
by D. D. Cunningham. Having myself communicated the paper, I shall
always remember the pleasure with which I undertook in Ward's absence
to give an account of it. He solved the problem with convincing
completeness; he extended Schwendener's lichen theory to a group of
obscure epiphyllous organisms of which he afforded, for the first time,
a rational explanation. The success with which this was accomplished
placed him at once in the first rank of mycological investigators.
De Bary was the leading authority on Uredineae; and in 1882 Ward paid
a short visit to him at Strasburg to confer with him on his coffee
disease work, the accuracy of which de Bary entirely confirmed. There
he made the acquaintance of Elfving and completed his Meliola paper.
The outlook for Ward was now precarious. Fortunately, I found myself
sitting next to Sir Henry Roscoe at a Royal Society dinner, and I
suggested that Ward, as an old student of Owens College, would be
a fitting recipient of a Bishop Berkeley Fellowship for original
research. Principal Greenwood recorded the fact that "the very
important results already achieved by Mr Ward in Ceylon, in the
domain of the higher botany, led the Senate and the Council to make
this appointment." In 1883, he was appointed Assistant Lecturer and
Demonstrator in Botany, and, on the same testimony, "abundantly
justified his election." It was a peculiar pleasure to him to relieve
the veteran Professor Williamson by taking entire charge of Vegetable
Physiology and Histology. His position was, in the same year, made
secure by his election to a Fellowship at Christ's College, and he
married the eldest daughter of the late Francis Kingdon, of Exeter,
who was a connection of Clifford the mathematician.
The passion for research now completely possessed Ward and never left
him for the rest of his life. He published papers which added much to
our knowledge of the Saprolegnieae a group of fungi of aquatic habit,
partly saprophytic and partly parasitic. It is interesting to note
that he was particularly attracted by the mode in which the hyphae
attack the tissues on which they prey. This was a matter on which he
subsequently threw an entirely new light. He made the interesting
discovery of an aquatic Myxomycete, such a mode of existence being
hitherto unknown in the group, and worked out its life-history. But
his mind had now become definitely fixed on the problems presented by
plant diseases, and they remained the principal occupation of his life.
In their widest sense these resolve themselves into a consideration of
the mode in which one organism obtains its nutriment at the expense
of another. This ranges from a complete destruction of the host by
the parasite to a harmless and even advantageous symbiosis. He was
thus naturally led to an exhaustive study of the literature of the
Schizomycetes, and contributed an article on the group in 1886 to the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, which, for the time at any rate, gives
the best account of it, certainly in English, and probably in any
other language. When he supplemented this in 1902 by the article on
Bacteriology, it was largely to give an account of his own important
discoveries. In the earlier one, he had pointed out the difficulties of
a natural classification of Schizomycetes due to their pleomorphism,
which Lankester had demonstrated in 1873. He returned to the subject in
an article in the _Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science_ in 1892.
It may be noted that, in his British Association address at Toronto, he
took occasion to put in their proper relation the work of Cohn and of
his pupil Koch.
In 1885, the Regius Professorship of Botany at Glasgow was vacant by
the transference of Prof. Balfour to Oxford. Ward was a candidate
with the warm support of his fellow-botanists. It was thought that
his Colonial services would weigh with the Government; but other
influences were at work in favour of another candidate, whom, however,
the University refused to accept. A deadlock ensued, which was only
solved by the Government finally refusing to appoint either candidate.
This was a great disappointment to Ward, which was in some degree
mitigated by his appointment to the new Chair of Botany in the Forestry
Branch of the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's Hill. The
utilitarian atmosphere in which he found himself was not very congenial
to him. But he had at any rate at last some sort of adequate position
and a laboratory to work in, and here he remained--not, I think,
unhappily--for ten years. He was, as he had been at Manchester, a
successful teacher, and had the gift of interesting his pupils, whom
he used to bring weekly to Kew during the summer months to visit the
Arboretum. In point of research, this was the period of much of his
most brilliant work.
The study of Uredineae occupied Ward at intervals during his life.
The reproductive organs are pleomorphic, and it is no easy task to
ascertain with certainty those that belong to the same life-history.
In a paper on _Entyloma Ranunculi_, published in the _Phil. Trans._ in
1887, Ward for the first time traced the germination of the conidia
of an Entyloma, and confirmed Winter's suggestion that they were not
an independent organism, but actually belonged to it. Incidentally he
discussed the conditions which are favourable to the invasion of a host
by a parasitic fungus. This raised the question of immunity, to which
at intervals he repeatedly returned.
About the same time he published in the _Quarterly Journal of
Microscopical Science_ the results of an investigation undertaken for
the Science and Art Department on the mode of infection of the potato
plant by _Phytophthora infestans_, which produces the potato disease.
It was not easy to add anything to the classical work of de Bary, but
it was ascertained that "the development of the zoospores is delayed or
even arrested by direct daylight," and Ward's attention was attracted
to the problem, which he afterwards solved, of how the hyphae erode the
cell-wall.
The solution was given in 1888 in a paper in the _Annals of Botany_,
"On a Lily Disease," which has now become classical. He discusses
the fungus which produces it, and shows that the tips of the hyphae
secrete a cellulose-dissolving ferment which enables them to pierce
the cell-walls of the host. This ferment has since been described as
cytase. He shows that its production would determine the passage from a
merely saprophytic to a parasitic habit, and makes the suggestion that
an organism might be educated to pass from one to the other.
An admirable research (1887) was on the formation of the yellow dye
obtained from "Persian berries" (_Rhamnus infectorius_). A dyer had
found that uninjured berries afforded a poorer colouring liquor than
crushed. Gellatly had found, in 1851, that they contained a glucoside,
xanthorhamnin, which sulphuric acid broke up into rhamnetin and
grape-sugar. The problem was to localise the ferment which did the
work. Ward obtained the unexpected result that it was confined to the
raphe of the seed.
As early as 1883 Ward had attacked a problem which he pursued at
intervals for some years, and which was fraught with consequences
wholly unforeseen at the time. It had long been known that leguminous
plants almost invariably carried tubercular swellings on their roots.
The opinion had gradually gained ground that they were due to the
action of a parasite. Bacteria-like corpuscles had been found in the
cells of the tubercle, and it was assumed that they had played some
part in exciting the growth of the latter. "No one had as yet succeeded
in infecting the roots and in producing the tubercles artificially."
Ward described, in a paper in the _Phil. Trans._ in 1887, how he had
accomplished this. He showed, in fact, that a definite organism invades
the roots from the soil, and finds its access by the root-hairs.
Lawes and Gilbert had long ago proved that the higher plants are
incapable of assimilating free nitrogen. Hellriegel and Wilfarth
had, however, shown in 1886 that leguminous plants carry away more
nitrogen from the soil than could be accounted for. This Ward confirmed
by his own pot-experiments, and satisfied himself that the excess
could only be derived from the free nitrogen of the air. Hellriegel
further concluded that the tubercles played an essential part in the
process. Ward had no doubt that the bacteroids were the channel of
supply. But he failed to get any proof that they could assimilate free
nitrogen outside the plant. He suggested that their symbiosis might be
an essential condition, and was obliged finally to leave it an open
question whether the cells of the tubercles or the bacteroids were
the active agents in nitrogen assimilation. He had already stated in
1887 that it is very probable that the bacteroids "may be of extreme
importance in agriculture." But he was never satisfied with anything
short of the strictest proof.
In 1890 Ward was invited to deliver the Croonian Lecture. He chose for
his subject the relation between host and parasite in plant disease. He
defined disease in its most generalised form as "the outcome of a want
of balance in the struggle for existence." But the particular problem
to which he addressed himself was the way in which the balance is
turned when one organism is invaded by another. This is the most common
type of disease in plants and a not infrequent one in animals. The
first result reached was identical with that of Pasteur for the latter;
the normal organism is intrinsically resistant to disease. It is an
immediate inference that natural selection would make it so. Ward then
discusses very clearly the physiological conditions of susceptibility,
which he shows to be a deviation from the normal. He had already
indicated this in the case of Entyloma. The epidemic phase is reached
when the environment is unfavourable to the host but not so or even
favourable to the parasite. He then attacks the more obscure case where
there is no obvious susceptibility. This, he finds, resolves itself
into a mere case of the struggle for existence: "a struggle between
the hypha of the fungus and the cells of the host." It is more subtle
in its operation but of the same order of ruthlessness as the ravages
of a carnivore. Ward's account of the struggle is almost dramatic. The
cellulose "outworks" are first broken down, as he had previously shown,
by a secreted ferment. The "real tug of war" comes when the hypha is
face to face with the ectoplasm. Its resistance is at once overcome by
flooding it with a poison, probably oxalic acid.
War with attack and defence is a product of evolution. How did it come
about in this particular case? Ward convincingly traces out the whole
process. The normal plant obtains its food from inorganic material. But
when opportunity offers it easily lapses into a condition in which it
takes the material for metabolism ready made from the decay of others
and becomes saprophytic. Ward shows that it is only a step to the
attack on the living, and for the saprophyte to become a parasite, and
he further shows that it can be readily educated to be so. He does not
hesitate to suggest that the function of conidia in the complicated
cycle of fungal reproduction is to form the cellulose-dissolving
ferment. But now and again the host does not succumb to its invader.
A truce is sometimes called in the struggle, and host and parasite
are content to live together in a mutually advantageous symbiosis or
commensalism.
Three years earlier, in 1887, Ward's attention had been drawn by a
happy accident to the physiological aspect of symbiosis, and it never
ceased to occupy his mind. It was well known that ginger-beer was
made in villages in stone bottles. The fermentation was effected by
the so-called "ginger-beer plant" which was passed on from family to
family, but nothing was known as to how or where it originated. It
seemed to have some analogy with the Kephir of the Caucasus. A specimen
was sent to me from the Eastern Counties, and it stood for some time
in the sun in my study. I noticed the vigorous growth accompanied by a
copious evolution of gas. Ward coming to see me one day, I handed it
over to him as a problem worth his attention. At the same time Prof.
Bayley Balfour had examined it and concluded that it was a mixture of
a yeast and a bacterium. Its study involved Ward in a very laborious
research which occupied him for some years, and of which the results
were published in the _Phil. Trans._ in 1892. It proved to be a mixture
of very various organisms, every one of which Ward exhaustively
studied. This required not less than 2000 separate cultures. The
essential components proved to be, as Balfour had suggested, a yeast
derived from the sugar and a bacterium from the ginger. Both were
anaërobic; the yeast fermented cane-sugar with the copious production
of carbon dioxide but little alcohol; the bacterium also produced
carbon dioxide, even in a vacuum tube.
The action of the two components studied separately proved to be not
the same as when they worked in concert. This was conspicuously the
case with the evolution of carbon dioxide, which proceeded with such
violence as to make the research attended with considerable danger. It
is known that the action of ferments may be checked by the inhibition
of the products formed. Ward pointed out that while the use of these
might be advantageous to the bacterium, their consequent removal might
be equally so to the yeast. This established the important principle
of symbiotic fermentation and gave it a rational explanation. On the
morphological side Ward showed that the ginger-beer plant is comparable
to a gelatinous lichen, and, having resolved it into its constituents,
successfully reconstituted it.
The new conception threw a flood of light on many obscure points in
fermentation generally, and it is not surprising that Ward's work at
once attracted the attention of the brewing industry. It led him to an
even more fertile suggestion, that of metabiosis. It was known that the
finest wine is sometimes produced from mouldy grapes. He regarded this
as a case of one organism preparing the way for another. He returned
to the subject in a lecture given at the British Association at Dover
in 1899 and pointed out that in the Japanese manufacture of Saké,
an Aspergillus prepares the way for the yeast. He also showed that
metabiosis played an important part in nitrification.
Fungi cannot draw their nutriment from solid materials without first
profoundly modifying them. They accomplish a large part of their
digestion, so to speak, externally to themselves. This constantly
occupied Ward's mind. He insisted on the part played in the process by
ferments. The hyphae of Stereum (_Phil. Trans._ 1898) delignify the
walls of the wood elements of Aesculus layer by layer, and then consume
the swollen cellulose. He failed, however, to isolate the ferment which
does the work. Nor was he more fortunate with the little known fungus
Onygena, which grows on horn, hoofs and hair, setting free ammonia
as a final product (_Phil. Trans._ 1899). That there must be some
hydrolysis of keratin can hardly be doubted, for Ward established the
remarkable fact that the walls of the hyphae contain no cellulose, but
are composed of chitin. Onygena has, in fact, abandoned a plant for an
animal nutrition. This would place the germination of the species at
a great disadvantage. But he found that this difficulty was overcome
by the spores which had been licked from the skin germinating in the
gastric juice of the animal's stomach, and, when voided in the excreta,
infecting a new host by accidental contact. In the case of both Stereum
and Onygena he accomplished for the first time the difficult task of
tracing their life-history from spore to fructification.
Ward had prepared himself for the study of bacteria, and in the
nineties he undertook, with Prof. Percy Frankland, a prolonged research
on behalf of the Royal Society as to the conditions of their occurrence
in potable water. The reports of the results fill a thick volume, and
the amount of work involved is almost incredible. The bacteriology was
entirely due to Ward.
That bacteria are not an inevitable element in potable water is proved
by their absence from that of deep springs. They are arrested by
filtration through the earth's crust. In any river system they are
comparatively fewer towards the watershed, and more frequent towards
the mouth. The obvious conclusion is that they are derived from the
drainage of the land. As it is known that the bacteria of cholera and
typhoid are water-borne, it becomes a problem of vital importance to
ascertain if river water is a possible means of distributing these
diseases. Ward set to work to ascertain: (i) What was the actual
bacterial flora of Thames water; (ii) if this included any pathogenic
organisms; (iii) if not, what became of them? The labour required by
the first two branches of the enquiry was enormous; he identified and
cultivated some eighty species; the resulting answer to the second was
happily in the negative.
As to the third, two facts were known. First, that river water,
if stored, largely cleared itself of bacteria by mere subsidence;
secondly, that Downes and Blunt, in a classical paper communicated to
the Royal Society in 1877, had shown that exposure to direct sunlight
is fatal to bacteria in a fluid medium. Ward showed that subsidence
could not be entirely relied on, as the sediment might easily become
the source of re-infection. The effect of sunlight required more
critical examination.
It was known that the spores of anthrax were liable to be washed
into rivers. Ward determined to study this as the most extreme
type of pathogenic infection. As it is undoubtedly the most deadly
micro-organism known, and Ward proposed to deal with it on a large
scale, it implied no small degree of courage. He found that the spores
of anthrax were effectually killed by a few hours' exposure to even the
reflected light of a low winter sun. It was clear that this was due to
the direct action of the light and not to any heating effect, apart
from the fact that they will tolerate boiling for a few minutes. It was
further shown that there was no foundation for the theory of Roux and
Duclaux that their death was due to poisoning by products of oxidation
of the food-medium. Proof of this, indeed, was hardly required, for
Pasteur had shown that the bacteria floating in the atmosphere are
mostly dead. Were it not so, no surgical operation would be possible.
To the bactericidal effect of sunlight is equally to be attributed the
absence of bacteria from the High Alps.
The next point was to ascertain to what rays the effect was due. The
spores of anthrax are so minute that, when mixed in large numbers with
gelatine, they do not affect its transparency, A plate of glass coated
with the mixture is at first clear, but ceases to be so if kept in the
dark, owing to the germination of the spores. Ward found, in fact, that
a photograph could be printed with it, the darkening being the reverse
of that of a silver plate. After experiments with coloured screens
he completely solved the problem in 1893, with the aid of apparatus
supplied by Sir Oliver Lodge and some advice from Sir Gabriel Stokes,
by photographing the spectrum on such a plate. It was at once seen
that the destructive effect was due to rays of high refrangibility,
and, what was extremely important, extended to, and found its maximum
in, the ultra-violet. The same results were obtained with the typhoid
bacillus. He made the suggestion that the arc light might be used for
the disinfection of hospitals and railway carriages.
Comparatively little was known of the life history of any Schizomycete.
Ward therefore made a detailed and exhaustive study of that of
_Bacillus ramosus_, the _Wurzel bacillus_ of German authors, which is
common in Thames water, and bears a superficial resemblance to the
anthrax bacillus, but is innocuous. It proved convenient for study, as
it ran through its entire life history in from thirty to sixty hours
at ordinary temperature. It forms long filaments, the growth of which
Ward was able to measure under the microscope with great precision. On
plotting out his measurements he obtained a regular curve, from which
he found that, under constant conditions, the filament doubled itself
in equal times. This he called "the law of doubling." It is the same as
the so-called "law of compound interest," and leads to the expression
of the growing quantity as an exponential function of the time, so
that the time is proportional to the logarithm of that quantity. This
relation has, of course, long been familiar in chemical reactions, but,
as far as I know, Ward was the first to detect it in any vital process
in a plant. This, which was in 1895, has, I think, been overlooked.
Stefanowska has since, in 1904, obtained a logarithmic curve for the
early period of the growth of maize, which doubles its weight every ten
days, and the subject has since been pursued by Chodat and others.
In speculating on the cause of the destructive action of light on
bacteria, Ward adopted the view of his friend Elfving, that it
inhibited metabolic processes necessary to nutrition. He suggests that
the "constructed metabolites" at the moment of assimilation are in
a highly unstable condition, and liable to destruction by oxidation
promoted by light. He points to the fact that plant structures are
frequently provided with colour screens, which would cut off the
blue-violet rays and check their action in promoting the rapid
oxidation of reserve materials, and he quotes the suggestion of Elfving
that chlorophyll itself may serve as such a screen against "destructive
metabolic action in synthesis." Ward seems to have attributed little
importance to the fact that substantially the same view had long before
been put forward by Pringsheim, though received with little favour. His
own view that when red and orange predominate in the screens their
effect is protective, has since afforded a probable explanation of the
colouration of young foliage, especially in the tropics.
It can hardly be doubted that the upshot of Ward's laborious
investigations has had a powerful influence in deciding the policy
of the future water supply of London. If we hear nothing now of
obtaining it from Wales, it is because we know that even polluted
flood-water if exposed in large reservoirs will rid itself of its
bacterial contamination, partly, as was known already, by subsidence,
but most effectually, as shown by Ward, by the destruction of its most
deleterious constituents by the direct action of sunlight.
In 1895, Ward was called to the Chair of Botany at Cambridge. He was
supported by a distinguished body of fellow-workers, and developed a
flourishing school, in which every branch of the science found its
scope. The University erected for it an institute which is probably the
best equipped in the country, and in March, 1904, I had the pleasure of
seeing Ward receive the King and Queen at its inauguration.
During the later years of Ward's life he returned to the study of the
Uredineae. The scourge of wheat perhaps from the dawn of agriculture
has been "Rust,"
"Ut mala culmos esset rubigo ... intereunt segetes";
and the loss inflicted by it throughout the world is probably not
calculable. But the history of the Ceylon coffee disease is only too
patent an instance of the injury a uredine can effect.
Eriksson, the most recent authority on the subject, had found himself
quite unable to account for sudden outbursts of rust which it did not
seem possible to attribute to the result of infection. In 1897 he
launched his celebrated theory of the Mycoplasm. He supposed that a
cereal subject to rust was permanently diseased and always had been;
that the protoplasm of the Uredo-parasite and of the cereal, though
discrete, were intermingled and were continuously propagated together;
but that while that of the latter was continuously active, that of the
former might be latent till called into activity by conditions which
favoured it. Ward discussed the theory in his British Association
address at Toronto, and was evidently a good deal impressed with it,
but nothing short of actual demonstration ever convinced him; and when
he proceeded to investigate the actual histological facts on which the
theory rested he promptly exploded it.
It is interesting to note that Ward, as I know from correspondence at
the time, had himself been embarrassed in investigating the Ceylon
coffee disease by the same kind of appearance which had misled
Eriksson. It is due to an optical fallacy. When the hypha of a uredine
attacks a cell it is unable to perforate it with its whole diameter. It
infects it, however, with a reduced and slender filament; this expands
again after perforation into a rounded body, the haustorium. In a
tangential section the perforating filament cannot be distinguished,
and the haustorium looks like an independent body immersed in the
cell-protoplasm and with no external connection. It requires a
fortunate normal section to reveal what has really taken place. Ward
was accordingly able, in a paper in the _Phil. Trans._ in 1903, to
dispose conclusively of the mycoplasm. This cleared the ground of an
untenable hypothesis. The complicated nature of the problem which still
presented itself for investigation can only be briefly indicated.
Sir Joseph Banks, whose scientific instinct was sound but curiously
inarticulate, had pointed out that the spores entered the stomata, and
warned farmers against using rusted litter. Henslow, one of Ward's
predecessors in the Cambridge chair, had been confirmed by Tulasne in
showing that the uredo-and puccinia-spores (of the barberry) belonged
to the same fungus. De Bary traced the germination of the spores and
the mode in which the hyphae invaded the host; the fundamental fact,
which he observed but did not explain, was that the germinal filament,
after growing for a time superficially, bent down to enter the tissues
of its host. Pfeffer in 1883 discovered chemotaxis, the directive
action of chemical substances on the movement of mobile organisms. De
Bary had previously hinted that the hypha might be attracted by some
chemical ingredient of the host plant. Myoshi, a pupil of Pfeffer's,
showed finally in 1894 that if a plant were injected by a chemotropic
substance a fungus-hypha not ordinarily parasitic might be made to
behave as such and attack it.
In such circumstances it might seem that the host was not merely
incapable of resisting invasion by the parasite but actually invited
its attack. Nature is, however, not easily baffled in the struggle for
existence. Attack provokes new methods of defence. Ward soon found
himself face to face with "problems of great complexity," and these
occupied the closing years of his life.
It had been ascertained in fact that the rust fungus is not, as was
at first supposed, a single organism, but comprises, according to
Eriksson, thirteen distinct species, each with physiological varieties,
and that those which are destructive to some grasses and cereals, are
incapable of attacking others. This necessitated a scrutiny of the
nature of grass-immunity. In a paper communicated to the Cambridge
Philosophical Society in 1902, Ward announced a conclusion which was as
important as it was unexpected. He had more and more made use of the
graphical method for presenting to the eye at a glance the result of a
mass of separate observations. In this case he uses it with striking
effect. He shows conclusively, as far as rust in brome-grasses is
concerned, that: "The capacity for infection, or for resistance to
infection, is independent of the anatomical structure of the leaf, and
must depend on some other internal factor or factors in the plant."
Finally, he is led to the conclusion that "it is in the domain of
the invisible biological properties of the living cell that we must
expect the phenomena to reside." He pointed out the probability that
light would be thrown on this from the action of chemotaxis, on the
one hand, and from that of toxins and antitoxins in animal organisms
on the other. This is a most fertile conception, which would, however,
have required a good deal of verification, and this, unhappily, he
did not live to attempt. But with characteristic ingenuity he pointed
out the analogy between the infective capacity of uredospores and
the prepotency of pollen, which had previously engaged the attention
of Darwin. In a paper published in the following year in the Berlin
_Annales Mycologici_, he announced a no less significant result. With
his usual thoroughness in research he had cultivated side by side at
Cambridge more than two hundred species and varieties of Bromus,
and had watched the degree to which they were infected by rust under
identical conditions. He found that though in the brome-grasses the
rust peculiar to them is specifically identical its _forms_ are highly
specialised. The form which attacks the species of one group will not
attack those of another. Host and parasite are mutually "attuned." He
termed this "adaptive parasitism." This raised the problem, which had
first occurred to him in Ceylon, of how a parasite adapted to species
of "one circle of alliance" can pass to those of another. Occasionally
it happens that a uredo-form will infect a species where it ordinarily
fails. In such a case "its uredospore progeny will thenceforth readily
infect that species." Ward regarded this as a case of education.
Working on this principle, he succeeded by growing the parasite
_successively_ on a series of allied species which were imperfectly
resistant, to ultimately educate it to attack a species hitherto
immune. He called these "_bridgeing species_." He established, in fact,
a complete parallelism between the behaviour of rust-fungi and that of
pathogenic organisms in animals.
In the midst of this far-reaching research his health began to fail.
In 1904 he had been appointed by the Council to represent the Royal
Society at the International Congress of Botany held at Vienna in
June of the following year. This he attended, though more seriously
ill than he was aware of. On his way back he spent three weeks for
treatment at Carlsbad, but receiving no benefit, he went, on the advice
of Dr Krause, to Dr von Noorden's Klinik at Sachsenhausen (Frankfort).
Nothing could be done for him, and he was advised to return home by
easy stages. After a period of progressive and extreme weakness, borne
with unflinching courage, the end came somewhat suddenly at Torquay on
August 26, 1906. He was buried at Cambridge in St Giles's Cemetery on
September 3.
From 1880, the year following his degree, Ward never ceased for a
quarter of a century to pour out a continuous stream of original work.
This alone would be a remarkable performance, had he done nothing
else. But he was constantly engaged in teaching work, and he acted as
examiner in the Universities of London and Edinburgh. With no less
conscientiousness he complied with the demands which the scientific
world makes on its members; he served on the Councils of the Royal
(1895) and Linnean (1887) Societies; he was President of the Botanical
Section of the British Association at Toronto in 1897, and of the
Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1904. Beyond all this he found
time to give addresses with unfailing freshness of insight; a lecture
at the Royal Institution on April 27, 1894, on the "Action of Light
on Bacteria and Fungi" was a notable performance; he wrote numerous
articles of a more popular kind, and he produced a number of excellent
manuals for students on subjects connected with forest, agricultural
and pathological botany. Activity so strenuous almost exceeds the
limits of human possibility.
Under the influence of Sachs, Ward might have become a distinguished
morphologist. But his work in Ceylon led him into a field of research
from which he never deviated. A survey of his performance as a
whole, such as I have attempted, has a scientific interest of its
own. His research was not haphazard. A continuous and developing
thread of thought runs through it all. The fundamental problem was
the transference of the nutrition of one organism to the service of
another. Of this, in Ceylon, Ward found himself confronted with two
extreme types, and of both he made an exhaustive study. In Hemileia it
was ruthless parasitism; in Strigula advantageous commensalism. Bornet
put Schwendener's theory on a firm foundation when he effected the
synthesis of a lichen; Ward, in another group, did the same thing for
the ginger-beer plant. In such cases the partnership is beneficial. The
problem is to trace the process by which one partner gets the upper
hand and becomes merely predatory. Ward inherited a strong taste for
music, though I believe he never cultivated it. A musical simile may
not inappropriately be applied to his work. In its whole it presents
itself to me as a symphony in which the education of protoplasm is a
recurring _leit-motiv_.
A few words must be said as to his personal characteristics. He had
all the qualifications for the kind of research to which he devoted
himself. He was singularly dexterous and skilful in manipulation. He
was a refined and accomplished draughtsman, and was therefore able
to do himself justice by illustration. He was rigorous in demanding
exhaustive proof. This almost deteriorated into a defect. He would
pursue every side issue which presented itself in a research, and was
quite content if it led to nothing. He would say in such a case: "I
will not leave a stone unturned." He was apt, too, I think, to attack
a problem in too generalised a form. In his nitrogen work it always
seemed to me that he wasted energy on remote possibilities, when a
clean-cut line of attack would have served him better[134]. But his
mind worked in that way, and he could not help himself. It was, I
think, one of the most fertile in suggestion that I ever came across.
In later years, in conversation especially, thought seemed to come
quicker than words to express it. In this respect he reminded one of
Lord Kelvin. In such a predicament he would simply remain silent, and
slowly move his head. This habit, I think, explains the reputation
of being "mysterious" which he seems to have acquired latterly at
Cambridge.
He was not without the honour at home which he deserved, apart from
the affection of his friends, and had he lived would doubtless have
received it from abroad. He was elected F.R.S. in 1888, and received
the Royal Medal in 1893. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Christ's
College in 1897, and received an Honorary D.Sc. from the Victoria
University in 1902.
Botanical science could ill spare his loss at the early age of 52. But
it may be grateful for 25 years of illuminating achievement. It might
have been hoped that another quarter of a century would be allotted to
one so gifted. But if the "inexorabile fatum" decreed otherwise, he is
at least to be numbered amongst those of whom it may be said
"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."
FOOTNOTE:
[134] NOV. 1911. I must guard myself against the implication that
Marshall Ward's method was wrong in principle. For as pointed out by
Prof. Turner in his "Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section"
of the British Association at Portsmouth the maxim of "leaving no stone
unturned" is identical with Prof. Chamberlin's "Method of Multiple
Working Hypotheses." And what is at first sight an unlikely hypothesis
may turn out to be the true one. Yet the rigorous application of the
method is time-consuming and life is short. Some liberty of selection
in testing the hypothesis that seems most probable must be allowed the
investigator, and the instinct of genius may sometimes hit on the right
one.
A SKETCH OF THE PROFESSORS OF BOTANY IN EDINBURGH FROM 1670 UNTIL 1887
BY ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR
Medicine and Botany--James Sutherland--enforced retirement--the
Prestons--Charles Alston--his career--John Hope--Physiological
leanings--Daniel Rutherford--Robert Graham--John Hutton
Balfour--characteristics--Botanic Society of Edinburgh
founded--appointed to Glasgow--transfer to Edinburgh--his
numerous activities--laboratory teaching established--field
excursions--Ecology--attitude to Darwinism--Alexander Dickson--work
in Organography--his versatility.
My task in the warring against oblivion typified in these addresses is
to speak about John Hutton Balfour of Edinburgh, one of the botanical
teachers of the middle of last century, whose pupils were numbered by
thousands, and whose active life bridged the period of the passing of
the old and the birth of the new outlook upon science through Darwin's
work; and in relation to what I have to say of him I propose to sketch
briefly the stages and development of botanical teaching in Edinburgh
from the date when systematised attention was first given to it.
Of the well-recognised fact that the study of Botany as a science
has been, to begin with, dependent on Medicine my story furnishes an
excellent illustration.
Only towards the end of the seventeenth century had the advance in
practice of Medicine in Edinburgh reached a stage which gave urgency
to a movement for the improvement in the training of the medical man,
and the protection of the public from the attentions of inefficient
votaries of the healing art. The foundation of the Royal College of
Physicians in 1681 gave expression to the co-operative principle in
the control of those who would profess Medicine; the creation of a
Botanic Garden for the purpose of the cultivation of medicinal plants
was the response in the direction of safeguarding the practitioner
against the herbalist, and of giving him the advantage of a correct
knowledge of the plants which were the source of the drugs he himself
was to compound. Before this time, whilst many practitioners could grow
drug-plants for themselves, and did so, the majority were at the mercy
of the herbalist.
Two Edinburgh physicians--(Sir) Robert Sibbald and (Sir) Andrew
Balfour--conspicuous among their fellows for their activity in
promoting the cause of medical education and in the planning of the
Royal College of Physicians, were the pioneers of the study of Botany
as a science. Determined that the apprentices in Medicine should have
adequate opportunity of learning the sources of many of the drugs in
use, they acquired a lease of a small area of land in the neighbourhood
of Holyrood Palace in which they arranged to cultivate medicinal
plants, stocking it from their own gardens and from those of friends.
They secured the services of James Sutherland--described as "knowing"
in these matters--and placed their small garden under his care, with
the obligation that he should instruct the apprentices and lieges in
Botany. Sutherland cultivated his plants so well, and the instruction
which he gave was so satisfactory, that ere long--no doubt through
Sibbald's influence at Court--a portion of the Royal Flower Garden at
Holyrood Palace was assigned for the cultivation of medicinal plants,
and thither was transferred the collection already made in the hired
area. Thus was founded, with the title of Physick Garden, a Royal
Botanic Garden in Scotland, and the first Profession of Botany was set
up therein by James Sutherland.
Of the earlier years of Sutherland we have no record. His success as a
teacher induced the Town Council of Edinburgh--the body in which was
vested at the time all the patronage of the University--to institute
a Chair of Botany in the University, and to provide for practical
teaching in another Botanic Garden belonging to the town. Sutherland
was appointed to the Professorship and also to take charge of this
new Town Garden, which, it may interest those who at the present day
pass through the Waverley Railway Station to know, occupied a portion
of the site of that station. Both these gardens were at some distance
from the University, and apparently to save the time of the University
students, perhaps also to create a teaching garden entirely within the
jurisdiction of the College authorities, another portion of ground
occupying a part of the Kirk o' Field, notorious as the place of
Darnley's murder, was transformed into a herb-garden. Thus within a few
years from the beginning of the movement for the providing of adequate
facilities to students for learning about plants, three Botanic Gardens
were made available.
During Sutherland's tenure of the Professorship teaching was given
by him in these different gardens. It would appear, however, that
Sutherland was at heart a numismatist, and whilst during the early
period of his incumbency of office he had corresponded with many
botanical institutions abroad, had introduced to the gardens new
species of plants--many of them now established in the flora--and had
published in 1683 a _Catalogue of the plants in the Physical Garden_,
in later years his interest was centred in coins and medals. So great
was the obsession that the patrons of the University, dissatisfied with
his botany, compelled him to resign his Chair in 1706, to which they
appointed Charles Preston, but Sutherland retained, until he retired
in 1715, charge of the Royal Botanic Garden at Holyrood, of which by
Royal Warrant he had been made Keeper with the additional personal
recognition of Botanist to the King in Scotland. Thus the increase in
number of gardens extended to the Professors, and from 1706 onwards to
1739 there were two rival Botanical Schools in Edinburgh--that of the
Royal Garden, and that of the University.
Sutherland's place in relation to the development of scientific
Botany in Scotland is that of pioneer in the teaching of systematic
Botany from the living plants in relation to Materia Medica, and
of first custodian and cultivator of plants for instruction in a
public garden. His _Catalogue_ is now a book of some rarity--of great
rarity in complete state owing to the number of cancel pages--and its
reproduction at the present time would have interest alike scientific
and historic. It is the first published record of a collection of
cultivated plants in Scotland. It tells us the plants which were
recognised as indigenous at its date, and from its record we can by
correlation with information otherwise obtainable discover the time of
introduction to Scotland of alien plants, and thus obtain a basis for
gauging their influence on the native Flora as we know it now.
Charles Preston who stepped into the University Chair of Botany vacated
in 1706 by Sutherland, was a medical man, an active correspondent of
Sloan, Pettiver, and other scientific men in the south. On his death
in 1712, after a short tenure of office, George Preston his brother
succeeded him and filled the chair until 1739. Both of the Prestons
seem to have been chiefly interested in the Materia Medica side of
Botany and their teaching was on the lines of it. They are referred to
by their contemporaries as men of botanical knowledge and of critical
judgment, and their correspondence indicates that they were in touch
with the botanical life of their time. Their work in teaching was
always in rivalry with that at the Royal Physick Garden. At first no
doubt it was effective and useful owing to Sutherland's neglect of
his garden, but when a capable active scientific Professor was placed
in charge of this Garden the case for such rivalry and duplication
of effort ceased, and it is no surprise therefore to find that when
a vacancy occurred in 1739 the University Chair was filled by the
appointment of the King's Botanist in Charge of the Royal Physick
Garden, who was then Dr Charles Alston. And this combination continues
to our own time by mutual consent of the Crown and the University.
Sutherland's retirement in 1715 from the Royal Physick Garden four
years before his death, which took place in 1719 when he was over
80 years of age, may have been determined by his incapacity for the
duties, but it is probable other influences were effective especially
as the office of King's Botanist was a Household Appointment and only
during pleasure. Were I merely to tell of incidents in the history of
Botany in Edinburgh I would here introduce the story of Dr William
Arthur, Sutherland's successor at the Royal Garden. Arthur has no
botanical claims, but had influential political friends whose zeal
on his behalf he ill requited by becoming one of the leaders in the
Jacobite plot to capture the Castle of Edinburgh in 1715. Having failed
in the attempt he escaped to Italy, where in 1716 he died from a
surfeit of figs! Ignoble fate for a King's Botanist!
A man of real distinction now comes into our botanical history in
Charles Alston--a clear observer and experimenter.
Charles Alston, born 24th October, 1685, was the third son of Thomas
Alston, M.A. of Edinburgh and M.D. of Caen, one of an old Lanarkshire
family settled at Thrinacre Milne and connected with the house of
Hamilton. After boyhood at Hamilton, Alston went to the University of
Glasgow, but before the period for graduation his father died leaving
a widow and large family poorly provided for and young Alston's
University career was stopped. Through the intervention of the Duchess
of Hamilton Alston was then apprenticed in 1703 to a lawyer with a
view to his entering the Estates Office of the Hamilton family. But
"anatomy and the shops were more agreeable to him than Style Books or
the Parliament House" and his "genius inclined more to Medicine," and
in 1709 when the Duchess took him into her service as her "Principal
Servant," in which position "he had aboundance of spare time," "he
ply'd close the Mathematics and whatever else he thought of use to a
student of Medicine, particularly Botany." With this training Alston,
through the influence of the Hamilton family, was made King's Botanist,
Professor of Botany, and Keeper of the Royal Physick Garden in 1716
after the disappearance of Dr Arthur.
He adopted a wise course on succession. Having put the Garden in such
order as he could he hied himself to Leyden in 1718 to study under
Boerhaave, and returning thence in August 1719 he graduated in Medicine
at the University of Glasgow, became Fellow of the Royal College of
Physicians, and in June 1720 was able to begin his botanical lectures
in the Garden, followed in November by a course on Materia Medica.
These courses he carried on until 1739 when he was given the University
Chair of Botany and Materia Medica, and the two Botany Schools were
thus merged in one. Alston was now colleague of Munro, Rutherford,
Sinclair, and other famous men who at this time were increasing the
reputation of the University as a Medical School, and he continued to
teach Botany and Materia Medica until his death in 1760.
Alston's teaching was mainly directed to the Materia Medica. His
full course of lectures on the subject prepared for publication by
himself appeared only as a posthumous work edited by his successor
Dr Hope, and they reflect the best knowledge of the time, showing
rational scepticism of the efficacy of many simples which experiment
had not tested. Essays "On Opium," and "On tin as anthelmintic," and
an "Index of Simples" published by him tell of his pharmacological
investigations, to which his correspondence with Fothergill and
others is also witness. The subject in this line to which he gave
most attention and on which he wrote three dissertations based on
experiments is that of Quicklime and Water--its efficacy in Calculus
and also as an agent for keeping water sweet. From Alston, Stephen
Hales, then in touch with the Admiralty upon questions of ventilation
and other matters of sanitation, obtained early suggestions, and a long
correspondence followed.
Alston, who had to earn his livelihood by medical practice, gave much
time to the administration of the Botanic Gardens under his charge, and
the elaborate lists which he prepared showing the disposition of plants
in the Gardens, witness to his interest in their cultivation. His
predilection in systematic arrangement was Tournefortian, and on the
promulgation by Linnaeus of his "sexual system" in 1736, no writer was
more trenchant than Alston in opposition to it, and by this he became
widely known. His criticism was directed against it, not as a method
of arranging plants by readily recognised characters, but from the
standpoint of denial of the existence of sex. By various experiments
as well as by argument, Alston endeavoured to disprove the necessity
of the stamens for the development of fertile seed, citing cases of
seed-production where no application of the "dust" from the stamens was
possible--thus early recognising conditions which puzzled botanists for
many generations afterwards and until the explanation of apogamy was
supplied. One is tempted to wonder whether if the Linnaean system had
not received the appellation "sexual" it would have roused the same
condemnation from him as it did.
From his published work, notably the _Dissertation on Botany_ (1754)
a translation of a portion of his earlier _Tirocinium Botanicum
Edinburgense_ (1740), as also from some MS. of his lectures which still
exist, we recognise the clearness and vigour of mind of Alston, and
the precision of the man is made abundantly evident in the beautiful
copper-plate writing in old script of his MS. Page after page is
filled without blot or correction, and the whole systematised and
arranged without flaw. Anatomical questions were dealt with by him in
consonance with the knowledge of the time, mainly resting on Malpighi;
but there is no rational treatment of physiological subjects, and this
is the more surprising inasmuch as he was in intimate correspondence
with Hales, and ought to have been acquainted with the fundamental
experimental work of that physiologist. It may be that the fragments
of record from which we have to judge are insufficient for correct
appraisement, but on all the evidence we possess we must conclude
that the two volumes of his _Materia Medica_ give us a picture of the
direction of his teaching, and that Botany in the hands of its leading
expositor in Edinburgh was at this period only a hand-maid to Medicine.
The advent of Alston's successor, John Hope, was the dawn of new
things. The influence of the work of Hales had reached Edinburgh.
Comparatively few botanists of to-day have heard the name of John
Hope otherwise than as that of a correspondent of Linnaeus and
protagonist in this country of his system of classification, for these
are the claims to distinction assigned to him by the historians of
British Botany; and if one reckons the value of a man's life-work in
science by his published writings alone, that of John Hope would be a
minimum; for only such papers as those "On Rheum palmatum," "On Ferula
Assafoetida," "On Eriocaulon septangulare in Scotland," are extant
from his pen. Yet John Hope was a botanist inspired by the spirit of
research who obtained by scientific experimental work and explained
to his pupils facts of plant physiology some of which the botanical
world learned from other workers only a hundred years afterwards. It is
difficult to account for Hope's reticence. It may be that he intended
to give his work to the world in the book upon Botany which had engaged
his attention for many years and of which the MS. was in great part
ready at the time of his unexpected death in 1786--if so, the botanical
world has been the poorer through the want of Hope's book.
But if Hope did not give cause by published contributions to natural
knowledge for his recognition in promoting the advance of Botany,
he has always been remembered with gratitude for services of
administration which he was peculiarly fitted to render and which
profoundly affected the study of Botany in Edinburgh.
John Hope was born 10th May, 1725. The son of Robert Hope, a surgeon
in Edinburgh, whose father had become one of the Senators of the
College of Justice with the title of Lord Rankeillour. Educated at a
famous school in Dalkeith, John Hope, who early showed a liking for
Botany, entered the University of Edinburgh as a medical student and
became a pupil of Alston. His botanical inclinations tempted him to
break the course of his medical studies in Edinburgh to study Botany
under Bernard de Jussieu in Paris. Returning to Scotland he graduated
in Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1750, joined the Royal
College of Physicians in Edinburgh and began medical practice,
giving to Botany such time as could be spared from the many ties of
a successful practice. In 1760 Alston died, and John Hope became
his successor, first of all in 1761 as King's Botanist at Holyrood
and subsequently as Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in the
University.
Soon after appointment Hope recognised that to continue to hold
"colleges" in Materia Medica meant spoliation of his botanical work.
The time had come for a separation of the two subjects of Botany and
Materia Medica. Problems of the former now pressing were not those
specially relating to medicinal plants. He therefore managed to carry
through an arrangement by which he retained a chair as Professor
of Medicine and Botany, and a new Professorship of Materia Medica
was created. The importance of this step for botanical progress was
great--it was not merely a question of time occupied but of scientific
outlook.
Another movement in the direction of concentration of effort in
the cause of Botany was initiated by Hope early in his official
career--that for the creation of a new Botanic Garden in a locality
outside the immediate influence of town atmosphere, in which the
collections distributed over the Holyrood and Town Gardens could be
combined. He accomplished his design, and not only this, but obtained
from the Crown a permanent endowment for the new Garden. This was no
small achievement--but the omens were favourable, for those patrons
of science the Earl of Bute and, later, the Duke of Portland, were in
power when the Professor made use of the great influence which his
family possessed to secure his ends. A spreading city in time made the
location of Hope's new Garden unsuitable, and it was transferred to
the present site; but it was the effort by Hope which gave the Botanic
Garden, and through it Botany, a status among institutions requiring
subsidy and maintenance by Government in Scotland, and the obligation
so imposed has been upheld notwithstanding an attempt in later years
on the part of the Government to get rid of it--an attempt which the
short-sighted policy of the University nearly allowed to succeed.
Hope's duties in his University Chair required of him, in addition to
his botanical work, clinical teaching in the Hospital, and he also
engaged in practice--this for a livelihood--and took active share
in the affairs of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he was
President at the time of his death, which occurred in 1786. Botany
could therefore claim but a portion of his time.
Having established the new Garden, he laboured with assiduity to lay it
out effectively, and then to enrich it with plants. His own ardour and
enthusiasm impressed others, and his pupils in all parts of the world
contributed to making the Garden a renowned collection of the rarest
plants. Here Hope met his students, and here he carried out his many
physiological experiments which gave them instruction.
His teaching was comprehensive. Although no longer tied by the calls
of his Materia Medica, Hope did not ignore the subject entirely, but
plants in this relation were not the groundwork of his instruction.
Systematic and descriptive Botany, recognition of herbs, still found
a place in it. In Alston the most strenuous opponent of the Linnaean
method had gone; it found in Hope a no less strenuous advocate, to
whose influence its rapid adoption in this country owed much. To what
extent Hope made excursions with his pupils, there is no evidence. His
_Hortus Siccus_ and lists of plants with localities show that he was
a field-botanist, and in correspondence with, if not more intimately
acquainted with, the botanists who were working out the Scottish Flora
at the period--such men, for instance, as Lightfoot, Stuart, Robertson.
This we do know, that he encouraged his pupils to investigate the Flora
of Scotland, giving yearly a gold medal for the best Herbarium, and
Hope's "peripatetic pupils" is a designation met with in literature of
the time. This aspect of Hope's teaching, consonant with the features
of the botanical literature of the period, is that which has been
commonly known. It is not however a complete picture. In Hope Scotland
had a physiologist of originality and skill--who was not only informed
upon the work of Hales, Duhamel, Mariotte and others, but who made his
own experiments, clearly devised and effective, and whose catholicity
is attested by his dealing with such problems as growth in length and
thickness, effect of light and gravity, movement of water, healing of
wounds, and the like. This physiology was an essential element of his
teaching, and the effect upon students of contact with such direct
wresting of truth from Nature must have been immense. Our knowledge
of all this, only recently acquired, throws a new light upon Hope's
character, and upon the influence which he appears to have exercised
on the education of the time. The pity is that he left no published
records, and that this bright period of brilliant research should
have become obscured by the scholasticism inherent in the method of
classification which he himself did so much to popularise.
In accordance with tradition, the Chair vacated by Hope was filled
by the election of another medical practitioner in Edinburgh. Daniel
Rutherford was born in Edinburgh 3rd November, 1749, the son of Dr
John Rutherford, who as Professor was associated with Alston and
others in the reformation of the Edinburgh Medical School. He was
distinguished both as a classical scholar and as a mathematician, and
after graduating M.A. at the University of Edinburgh, he entered on the
medical curriculum, obtaining his diploma of M.D. in 1772. His thesis,
when applying for the degree, was "De aero fixo dicto aut Mephitico,"
and by this he became famous through the distinction he established
in it between carbonic acid gas and nitrogen, though he did not give
nitrogen its name. The exposition he gave of his precise experimental
work has been allowed to entitle him to be regarded as the discoverer
of nitrogen, although shortly before the appearance of his thesis
Priestley had practically, if less methodically, covered the ground.
After graduation, Rutherford travelled in France and Italy, returning
to Edinburgh in 1775 to begin the practice of Medicine, becoming
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he was afterwards
President.
Rutherford was a chemist, and I have not discovered in any references
to him expressions that would show he was at this period of his life
interested in plants otherwise than as objects for his experiments in
relation to the chemistry of the atmosphere. In seeking for a reason
to explain his selection as Hope's successor in the Chair of Medicine
and Botany, one may suggest either the general one of recognition of
his scientific ability, or the more special one that in experimenting
with plants he had been following on the lines of work so conspicuously
developed by Hope. And of course at that time some general knowledge of
Botany had to be the possession of every successful physician.
Like his predecessors, Rutherford had to undertake clinical teaching
in the Hospital; he maintained also his private practice, and was
keenly interested in the active literary world of his day in which his
nephew (Sir) Walter Scott was a brilliant star. The Botanic Garden
continued to hold its place as a scientific institution, and from
the advent of William McNab as Principal Gardener in 1810, developed
into one of the best known in the world. The recording of the plants
of Scotland also proceeded apace; two of the Principal Gardeners of
the Edinburgh Garden during Rutherford's Keepership--John Mackay
from 1800-1802, and George Don from 1802-1806--being foremost in
making known its floristic features, and their work Rutherford must
have encouraged. From MS. notes of his lectures, I gather that the
biological did not attract Rutherford, nor does it appear in the scanty
records available that any special development of teaching equipment or
of method took place during his tenure of office.
For some years before his death in 1819 Rutherford had been infirm; and
speculation as to his successor had been rife. Robert Brown and Sir
James Edward Smith were both spoken of. When the vacancy came Robert
Brown refused it and Robert Graham, then Professor in the University of
Glasgow, was appointed.
Robert Graham was born at Stirling 3rd December, 1786, the third son of
Dr Robert Graham of Stirling (afterwards Moir of Leckie). After early
education at Stirling, Graham was apprenticed in 1804 to Mr Andrew
Wood, Surgeon in Edinburgh, and entered on the study of Medicine at
the University, graduating M.D. in 1808. Thereafter he studied at St
Bartholomew's Hospital in London for a year before settling in Glasgow,
where he was also Lecturer in Clinical Medicine. During this period he
published a dissertation "On continued Fever."
Botany in the University of Glasgow at this time had not reached
the dignity of having a Professorship. It was attached to the Chair
of Anatomy, but a separate lecturer undertook its teaching. To this
lectureship Graham was appointed in succession to Dr Brown. This
appointment was the prelude to his election as Professor in 1818 when
the Chair of Botany was founded--a foundation which owed much to him
through his influence with the Duke of Montrose, then Chancellor of the
University, of whose house he was a cadet. One of the first efforts of
Graham in his new position was directed to the completion of a scheme
that was making for the formation of a Botanic Garden. In this he
succeeded, and botanical teaching in Glasgow was thus equipped in 1819.
From this sphere in which he had initiated so much, Graham came to
Edinburgh in 1820 as Professor of Medicine and Botany and was forced
again to take up medical practice and clinical teaching in the
Hospital, and in consequence to interest himself in the affairs of the
Royal College of Physicians, of which he became President--all this, as
in the case of his predecessors, in addition to his botanical work.
His first labour in relation to Botany was to transfer the Botanic
Garden which Hope had made to a new site--that which it now occupies.
Nearly two years were required to carry out the removal, to the
success of which the skill of William McNab, the Principal Gardener,
contributed greatly.
During the whole tenure of his offices Graham devoted himself to
the affairs of this Garden, and often in the very practical way of
supplying funds from his own resources to supplement the inadequate
grants obtained from Government. It gave him the material for the
description of many new species which were figured in the _Botanical
Magazine_ and other like periodicals. This systematic botanical work
was that which Graham cared for most, it was the backbone of his
teaching, and all of his scattered papers deal with this aspect of the
subject.
In connection with his teaching Graham developed specially the
botanical excursion for the study of Field Botany, making it an
integral part of his courses, and in furtherance of its aims travelling
far through Scotland--a business of a much more arduous nature in days
when railways and motors had not annihilated distance and provided
all the comforts of civilisation within easy reach of every district.
Graham had intended to publish a _Flora_ of Scotland as the result of
his practical study of its plants, but it was uncompleted at the time
of his death in 1845 after an illness of some duration during which
(Sir) Joseph Dalton Hooker acted as _locum tenens_.
Another new method in his teaching was that of encouraging students to
write essays upon subjects either practical or theoretical. In this he
stimulated investigation. Students in these days had more time than
they have now to devote to such things, and of their efforts some were
sound pieces of research--the _Botanical Geography_ of Hewitt C. Watson
first took form in one of these essays.
John Hutton Balfour[135], who succeeded Graham, was born in Edinburgh
15th September, 1808. The eldest son of Andrew Balfour, surgeon in the
Army, who afterwards settled in Edinburgh as printer and publisher,
in which business his enterprise was adequate to the venture of the
_Edinburgh Encyclopaedia_ under the editorship of (Sir) David Brewster.
Andrew Balfour was a grim old presbyterian of the stuff covenanters
were made, and in the strict home environment which he created young
Balfour early came into touch with theological dogma. The echo of these
early impressions remained with him throughout life.
Educated at the High School of Edinburgh where he laid the
foundation of sound classical scholarship--always his unobtrusive
distinction--Balfour entered the curriculum for the Arts degree at the
University. Before completing this he migrated to St Andrews in order
to be under the influence of Professor Thomas Chalmers--the famous
Divine, afterwards leader in the disruption that founded the Free
Church of Scotland--in conformity with the desire of his father that
he should become a minister in the Church of Scotland. But Divinity
did not claim him and he returned to Edinburgh to begin the study of
Medicine--a decision in face of family pressure which is tribute to
the strength of purpose which characterised him and found expression
frequently in after life.
At the beginning of this renewed Edinburgh curriculum Balfour attended
the Botany course of Professor Graham in 1825, and obtained his first
scientific instruction in Botany--a subject for which he had always
shown fondness. Robert Dickson, afterwards Lecturer on Botany at St
George's Hospital, London, was a fellow-student, and together they,
in this and following years, made many botanical excursions about
Edinburgh. With his fellows Balfour seems to have been _bon camarade_,
acquired all the ephemeral distinction attaching to a facile writer
of rhymed couplets for occasions, and as an inveterate maker of puns
was in demand for the office of punster at the convivial clubs of
the period. A mark of more serious attainment--he was President of
the Royal Medical Society in two years. After graduation as M.D.,
when he also became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in
Edinburgh--his thesis for the former being "De Strychnia," for the
latter "On Purulent Wounds"--Balfour went in 1832 to Paris to continue
his medical education, studying there under Dupuytren, Lisfranc, and
Manec. Returning, he settled in Edinburgh in 1834 and entered on
practice, becoming assistant within and without the University to Sir
George Ballingall, Professor of Military Surgery. Amongst his patients
he numbered De Quincey and his family. De Quincey's eldest son died
from a cerebral complaint, and the autopsy revealed an interesting
pathological condition which formed the subject of Balfour's
investigation, and an account of it his first published scientific
paper.
From the claims of Medicine Balfour could wrest little time for
botanical pursuits, but his holiday always meant the botanical
exploration of some area, preferably alpine, and his home became a
centre for men of kindred tastes. There in co-operation with his old
teacher Graham, and with Greville, Forbes, Falconer, Parnell, Munby and
others, was instituted in 1836 the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, with
wide aims for the promotion of Botany--amongst them the creation of a
botanical library and a herbarium. This has proved a signal service
to science. It was the pegging out of a claim which has been made
effective. The Society after a life--as with all such societies--of
fluctuating periods of greater and lesser activity, flourishes still,
and its library and herbarium, transferred to the Crown when the space
demand of their bulk became urgent, have been the foundation for the
large botanical library and herbarium now maintained and subsidised by
Government in the Royal Botanic Garden.
Plants gradually drew Balfour away from patients and in 1840 he carried
the divorce so far as to establish himself as a teacher of Botany
in the Extra-mural Medical School in Edinburgh--that exemplar of
free-trade in teaching--from which so many of the famous occupants of
Chairs in the University have entered its portals. But only in 1842,
when Sir William Hooker moved to Kew and a vacancy was then caused in
the Glasgow Chair of Botany to which Balfour was elected, was he able
to give up medical practice entirely.
In Glasgow the first years of Balfour's botanical career were spent,
but they were few. On the death of Graham he returned to Edinburgh
as Professor of Medicine and Botany and Keeper of the Royal Botanic
Garden--the electors passing over Joseph Dalton Hooker also a
candidate. In the sphere of these offices the rest of his active life
was passed until his retirement in 1879. He came to the University
of Edinburgh at a time when the reputation of its medical school was
upheld by a remarkable band of teachers in the Medical Faculty--Allen
Thomson, Alison, Christison, Goodsir, Gregory, Jameson, Simpson,
Syme--and when the struggle of the University after a revised
constitution was approaching the climax reached in 1858, when with
other Scottish Universities Edinburgh obtained autonomy, and science
was enfranchised. Of this Faculty he became Dean, and held office until
close upon the time when he became Emeritus. In all the discussions
and controversies, destructive and constructive, that attached to so
weighty a crisis, Balfour's influence and outlook for science were
used with effect, and no less influential were his action and advice
in subsequent years when the specific question of medical reform was
raised, as it so often was.
Absorbing administrative work of this kind, to which were soon added
the duties of a Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh--(and
he remained in the Secretariat to the end of his active life)--as
well as those of an editor of the _Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal_--(afterwards merged in the _Annals and Magazine of Natural
History_)--of Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society
and of other offices, made inroad alike upon time and energy of a man
who had also the administration of the Royal Botanic Garden in his
hands, as well as the calls of his Professorship of Botany to attend
to. But Balfour was untiring in industry, prompt and precise in method,
and administrative work appealed to him.
Though liable like his predecessors to undertake clinical medical
teaching, Balfour, save for occasionally acting as _locum tenens_, took
no share in it, and his energies in teaching were devoted to Botany. On
the lines he followed he was pioneer. We have seen that Field Botany
had been for several decades a characteristic of the Edinburgh Botanic
School. Whilst maintaining this feature, Balfour added laboratory work.
The word "laboratory" was not then in vogue, and "microscopical room"
was the designation of the new domain in which the "guillotine," not
the "microtome," was used. In the sphere of practical teaching this was
a notable advance, and the more so when the technical difficulties that
had to be overcome are remembered--the days of cheap microscopes were
but beginning, aniline dyes were not yet. Nevertheless the student of
the time had opportunity were he so minded of examining plant-form and
plant-structure for himself under direction, and if the equipment for
work were not so perfect mechanically as modern methods now permit of,
the training in minute observation was no less excellent than that of
to-day, and the educational effect of the teaching no less valuable.
The scheme of work was that of the text-books--passing progressively
from tissues to organs vegetative and reproductive both phanerogamic
and cryptogamic. The specialisation of the type system had not come.
Before he was able to establish, as he did in the early fifties,
practical laboratory classes, Balfour had introduced a system of
demonstrations of microscopic objects and of physiological experiments
in illustration daily of the subject of his lecture, and it is
testimony to his power of infusing zeal in pupils that there was
always a contingent of them ready to come to the Botanic Garden at six
o'clock in the morning to give voluntary aid in the arranging of these
demonstrations for the lecture at eight o'clock. Many of those who came
have recorded that they found that period and its work one of the most
inspiring in their student history.
This new departure in teaching did not interfere with the continuation
and extension of field-work, which up to this time had been the form of
practical study cultivated in Edinburgh. On the contrary the Botanical
Excursion gave Balfour an outlet for energy and favourable opportunity
for the exercise of those gifts of personal magnetism and intellectual
stimulus through which he influenced and guided many generations of
students. Every Saturday during the summer session an excursion was
made, and one of some days' duration usually brought the session to
a close. Through these excursions the greater part of Scotland was
traversed--on one occasion the terminal excursion of the session was to
Switzerland--and the features of flora and vegetation were brought to
the attention of many hundreds of students.
The aim and result of the excursion were not solely the acquisition
of plants and their identification. The stimulating effect on many of
this side of Botany is evidenced even in our day by the zeal with which
search after rare plants is pursued, and in the eagerness displayed
in the race after micro-forms. But the enticement of acquisition and
discovery of novelty whilst there were not the governing influences
in Balfour's excursion. In touch as he was with the problems of
organography in its fullest sense, a man of wide reading familiar with
the botanical work of his time, and associated as he had been in the
field with men like Edward Forbes and Hewett Cottrell Watson, Balfour
could and did look at plants from the standpoint of their place in
vegetation, and in relation to the conditions of growth, and as having
a history in their habitat. His teaching reflected this. It was never
classification, diagnosis, and nomenclature as the end-all of Botany.
The details emphasised changed as the progress of botanical discovery
gave new clues to explanation of form and relation, and it was the
solvings and attempts at solvings of observed phenomena that gave that
fascination to his excursions, the remembrance of which seems to have
clung to those who had the fortune to join them. The succession of
plants and plant-form from base to summit of a highland hill; contrasts
of vegetation of stream-course, mountain pasture, alpine rock; high
mountain forms of shore plants; intrusion and extirpation; factors
of distribution and their influence;--those and other problems of
what we now term Ecological Botany were themes on which the Professor
discoursed in his rambles, filling the pupil with information and
forcing him to think out to such conclusion as he might on the evidence
before him. And then the whole occasion was so enlivened by the outgo
of good humour and mirth in joke and pun and story, that fatigue and
weariness, which the physical exercise might evoke in those less
attuned than the wiry Professor, were drowned in the sunny current of
humanity.
I mention this practical teaching first, for it was the characteristic
feature, but the idea of practical illustration pervaded all Balfour's
effort. His lecture table became a synopsis of the lecture--living
plants, herbarium material, museum specimens, all were pressed into
service to elucidate the points of the discourse, whilst the walls
were tapestried by diagrams. Never did teacher more sedulously absorb
the new for presentation to his pupils. He was a lucid expositor, and,
apart from his University lectures, during many years was sought after
for more popular discourses to non-academic audiences.
The period of Balfour's teaching included the momentous year
1860. The impulse of the new spirit introduced by Darwin did not
stimulate Balfour as it might have done a younger man. His religious
beliefs--always in evidence--were showing then the influence of his
early environment, and whilst Darwin's work was incorporated in his
teaching, the acceptance of Darwin's theory appeared too near the
negation of faith. On Balfour indeed, as on others with like views,
the immediate effect of the _Origin_ was the opposite of vivifying.
It gave a shock. And this, I conceive, not so much a consequence of
Darwin's own statement of his theory as of the forceful uncompromising
attitude of the chief protagonist of his cause. Arrogance there was
on the religious side, but no less also on the scientific side in the
discussion. Perhaps it was well that the contest was sharp and bitter.
It ended sooner, but its course was strewn with misconceptions and with
confusion of cause and effect. In our days of complete reconciliation,
when every tyro lisps in phyletic numbers as the outcome of Darwin's
work, it is not amiss to recall the struggle at its inception--lest we
forget.
The system of Essays which formed so important a part of Graham's
teaching remained as prominent and was even developed further in
Balfour's course in a way which had the inestimable merit of making
the student feel that his study of plants had a living relationship
with the everyday concerns of life. Thus when Simpson was engaged
in his epoch-making investigations on anaesthetics, the subject for
an essay was the effect of anaesthetics on sensitive plants, and by
way of emphasis, the prize awarded was a gift by Simpson himself.
Similarly Balfour enlisted the sympathy of Messrs Lawson, the prominent
agricultural nurserymen of the day, and their prizes for dissection
of grasses, for kinds of cereals, and like subjects, were constant
reminders of the relations of botanical study to agriculture. The
subjects of essays covered a wide field. The titles--influence of
narcotic and irritant gases, changes which have taken place in the
Flora of Britain during the historical era, cytogenesis and cell
development, phanerogamous embryology, cryptogamous reproduction,
teratology--may serve to indicate this, and an essential was always the
practical illustration, microscopic or other.
For the use of the students Balfour compiled text-books which, like his
lectures, are comprehensive in the field they cover, and encyclopaedic
in the information they convey. His facile pen found expression too in
numberless articles in encyclopaedias and magazines, and his activity
as an expositor of botanical topics of the time was unbounded.
In the Botanic Garden Balfour obtained the material for the definite
contributions he made to natural knowledge which are in the domain
of Systematic Botany. No work in which Balfour engaged gave him more
genuine pleasure than the administration of the Botanic Garden.
Entering on the responsibility of its care when its repute was high,
he left it on laying down office in even higher reputation, for in the
McNabs--William and James--father and son--he had lieutenants of the
first rank in gardening. During his regime the equipment for laboratory
teaching to which reference has been made was installed, a museum to
which old pupils all over the world contributed was instituted, and the
Garden itself trebled in size, the latest addition, made just before
his retirement, being an area to be cultivated as an arboretum for
students of Forestry--a subject then beginning to claim attention.
With Balfour's retirement in 1879 the link of Botany with Medicine in
the University was still further weakened. Medicine was left out of the
title of the Chair to which Alexander Dickson succeeded.
Alexander Dickson of Hartree and Kilbucho was born at Edinburgh, 21st
July, 1836. He was the second son of David Dickson of Hartree in
Peeblesshire, and the representative of a family for long lairds of the
estates of which, by the early death of his elder brother, he became
proprietor. Educated privately, he entered the University of Edinburgh
as a student of Medicine, graduating in 1860. Before graduation he had
studied in Würzburg and in Berlin, particularly under Kölliker and
Virchow, and after it he embarked on the stream of medical practice in
Edinburgh. But that was convention--a demonstration of brass plate. His
means placed him beyond the necessity of such professional work. His
instinct lay in the direction of discovery of method more than in its
application. During his student days he had shown a keen interest in
Botany. Before graduation he had written on botanical subjects, and his
thesis on graduation "The development of the flower in Caryophyllaceae"
witnesses to his obsession. Whilst waiting for patients, he had
continued work on embryogeny in plants, and when in 1862 the ill
health of Professor Dickie at Aberdeen required the appointment of
a substitute, the selection of Dickson set seal to his claims as
a professed Botanist. In 1866 he succeeded Harvey as Professor in
Dublin. Thence in 1868 he was translated to Glasgow as successor to
Walker-Arnott, and in 1879 became Professor of Botany and Queen's
Botanist in Edinburgh on the retirement of Balfour, and, holding these
positions, he died in 1887.
Dickson's passion was not teaching, and his success is testimony to
the quality of the man. He was adored by his students, as could not
well be otherwise with a man of his geniality and kindliness; he took
immense pains over his lectures, spending hours daily over the making
of fresh drawings on the blackboard for his classes, holding that a
student would copy a temporary sketch although he would not copy a
permanent wall-diagram; the lecture itself was a model of scientific
presentment; at excursions he was untiring in demonstration and in
fruitful suggestion, and he was always ready to give of his best to
his pupils; but his real love was for research and he carried out
many organographical investigations which have added to the sum of
natural knowledge. His record in published papers far exceeds that of
any of his predecessors, and the quality of his work recalls that of
Irmisch. Flower-morphology, embryogeny, teratology, were the subjects
to which he gave most attention in research, and in them he obtained
results of solid and permanent value. For a time the subject of
phyllotaxy occupied him, but it is not a fruitful theme although it
gave him opportunity for showing his power of clear analysis; much more
interesting was his subsequent work on pitcher plants of kinds.
Dickson possessed great skill in manipulation, and was strikingly
effective in the use of his pencil in artistic delineation of the
objects of his investigation. Careful in his work he took endless pains
to secure that accuracy which it always shows. Further, his subject is
always illumined by the comparative method of treatment which his wide
knowledge and sound critical faculty enabled him to bring to bear upon
it.
The duties of his lairdship were no light ones to Dickson who had set
himself to build up again what had come to him in an impoverished
condition, and affairs of Church and State were a very real interest to
him. Amidst all these ties, to which has to be added the administration
of the Botanic Garden, in which during his tenure a new and enlarged
Lecture Hall was built, he found time to cultivate the musical faculty
for which he was distinguished; not only was he a pianist of mark, but
he found absorbing zest in the collecting of national airs sung by the
peasants of Scotland.
In the line of Professors of Botany in Edinburgh no one ranked higher
in distinction than Alexander Dickson, with whose name I conclude this
sketch.
FOOTNOTE:
[135] His portrait forms the frontispiece of this book.
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER
1817-1911
BY F. O. BOWER.
His long life--childhood and education--travels--Geological
work--Morphological Memoirs--administrative duties--systematic
works--relations with Darwin--acceptance of Mutability of
Species--his philosophical Essays--their influence in advancing
Evolutionary Belief.
It is a difficult task to condense within suitable limits an
appreciation of so long and strenuous a life as that of Sir Joseph
Hooker. Naturally with age the bodily strength waned, but the vivid
mind remained unimpaired to the end. He even continued his detailed
observations till very shortly before his death in December, 1911. The
list of his published works extends from 1837 to 1911, a record hardly
to be equalled in any walk of intellectual life.
[Illustration: _Plate XXVI_ SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER
(From the photograph by Mrs Cameron, 1868)]
Sir Joseph Hooker was born at Halesworth, in Suffolk, in 1817. His
father, Sir William Hooker, brought him to Glasgow as a child of four
years of age, when he entered on his duties as Professor of Botany
in 1821. The Professor established himself in Woodside Crescent,
conveniently near to the Botanic Garden, then but recently established,
but developing under his hands with wonderful rapidity. Doubtless his
little son was familiar with it and its contents from childhood. He
grew up in an atmosphere surcharged with the very science he was to
do so much to advance. His father's home was the scene of manifold
activities. It housed a rapidly growing herbarium and museum. It was
there that the drawings were made to illustrate that amazing stream of
descriptive works which Sir William was then producing. New species
must have been almost daily under examination, often as living
specimens. Between the garden and the house the boy must have witnessed
constantly, during the most receptive years of childhood, the working
of an establishment that was at the time without its equal in this
country, or probably in any other. The eye and the memory must have
been trained almost unconsciously. A knowledge of plants would be
acquired as a natural consequence of the surroundings, and without the
effort entailed by study in later years. Few ever have known, or ever
will know, plants as he did. Such knowledge comes only from growing up
with them from earliest childhood.
Side by side with this almost unconscious education in Botany the
ordinary curriculum of school and of college was pursued. There is
no record of academic successes either at the High School, or at the
University of Glasgow, beyond a prize "for the best Essay on the Brain
and Nerves," in 1836. But the following year saw his first publication:
for he described, while still a student, three new species of Mosses.
It may be remarked that, like his father, his first writings related
to the lower Plants. He never lost his interest in them, though in
later years duty diverted him to the study of the Flowering Plants. An
incident of his student period, which he himself relates, is, however,
a more clear indication of the life that was to follow than any early
publication of new species. He tells how an opportunity was given
him of reading the proofs of Darwin's _Voyage of the Beagle_. "I was
hurrying on my studies (that is for the final examination in Medicine)
... and so pressed for time was I that I used to sleep with the sheets
of 'The Journal' under my pillow, that I might read them between waking
and rising. They impressed me profoundly, whilst they stimulated me to
enthusiasm in the desire to travel and observe." The opportunity came
to him almost at once in the four years' voyage to the Antarctic. At
the age of 22, having passed his examinations, and graduated as M.D.,
he was equipped at every necessary point for his duties as Assistant
Surgeon and Botanist in the "Erebus," then about to start, along with
the "Terror," on the famous voyage under the command of Sir James Clark
Ross.
No attempt will here be made to give any consecutive biographical
sketch of Sir Joseph Hooker. Several such have already appeared. The
interest of the reader will be more readily engaged by indicating
the various lines of activity in which he excelled. He was never a
professional teacher, except for a short period of service as deputy
for Graham in Edinburgh. There was a moment when he might have been
Professor in Edinburgh, but it passed. He left no pupils, except in
the sense that all botanists have learned from him through his books.
We shall contemplate him rather as a Traveller and Geographer, as a
Geologist, as a Morphologist, as an Administrator, as a Scientific
Systematist, and above all as a Philosophical Biologist. He played each
of these several parts in the Drama of Science. The endeavour will be
made, however imperfectly, to touch upon them all.
The experiences of Hooker as a _traveller_ began immediately after
taking his degree, with his commission in 1839 as Assistant Surgeon
and Botanist in the "Erebus." Scientific Exploration was still in its
heroic age. Darwin was only three years back from the voyage of the
"Beagle." We may well hold the years from 1831, when the "Beagle"
sailed, to 1851, when Hooker returned from his Indian journey, or 1852,
when Wallace returned from the Amazon, to have been its golden period.
Certainly it was if we measure by results. Unmatched opportunity for
travel in remote and unknown lands was then combined with unmatched
capacity of those who engaged in it. Nor was this a mere matter of
chance. For Darwin, Wallace, and Hooker all seized, if they did not in
some measure make, their opportunity.
The intrepid Ross, with his two sailing ships, the "Erebus" and the
"Terror," probed at suitable seasons during four years the extreme
south. The very names of the Great Ice Barrier, M'Murdo Sound, Mount
Erebus and Mount Terror, made familiar to us by adventures seventy
years later under steam, remain to mark some of his additions to the
map of the world. Young Hooker took his full share of risks, up to
the point of being peremptorily ordered back on one occasion by his
commanding officer. To his activity and willingness, combined with
an opportunity that can never recur in the same form, is due that
great collection of specimens, and that wide body of fact which he
acquired. On the outward and return voyages, or in the intervals
when the season was not favourable for entering the extreme southern
seas, the expedition visited Ascension, St Helena, the Cape, New
Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Kerguelen Island, Tierra del Fuego, and
the Falkland Islands. The prime object of the voyage was a magnetic
survey, and this determined its course. But it brought this secondary
consequence; that Hooker had the chance of observing and collecting
upon all the great circumpolar areas of the southern hemisphere. The
results he later welded together into his first great work, _The
Antarctic Flora_.
Very soon after his return from the Antarctic the craving for travel
broke out afresh in him. He longed to see a tropical Flora in a
mountainous country, and to compare it at different levels with that
of temperate and arctic zones. Two alternatives arose before him:
the Andes and the Himalaya. He chose the latter, being influenced by
promises of assistance from Dr Falconer, the Superintendent of the
Calcutta Garden. But before he left England his journey came under the
recognition of Government. He not only received grants on the condition
that the collections made should be located in the Herbarium at Kew,
but he was accredited by the Indian Government to the Rulers, and the
British Residents, in the countries whose hitherto untrodden ways he
was to explore. After passing the cold season of 1848 in making himself
acquainted with the vegetation of the plains and hills of Western
Bengal, he struck north to the Sikkim Himalaya. Hither he had been
directed by Lord Auckland and by Dr Falconer, as to ground unbroken
by traveller or naturalist. The story of this remarkable journey,
its results and its vicissitudes, including the forcible detention
of himself and his companion Dr Campbell by a faction of the Court
of Sikkim, is to be found in his _Himalayan Journals_. These most
fascinating volumes of travel were published in 1854. They tell how he
spent two years in the botanical exploration and topographical survey
of the state of Sikkim, and of a number of the passes leading into
Thibet; and how towards the close of 1848 he even crossed the western
frontier of Sikkim, and explored a portion of Nepal that has never
since been open to travellers. In 1849 he returned to Darjeeling,
and busied himself with arranging his vast collections. Here he was
joined by an old fellow-student of Glasgow, Dr Thomas Thomson, son of
the professor of that name. The two friends spent the year 1850 in the
botanical investigation of Eastern Bengal, Chittagong, Silhet, and the
Khasia hills. In 1851 they returned together to England.
The botanical results of these Indian journeys were immense, and they
provided the material for much of Hooker's later scientific writing.
Nearly 7000 species of Indian plants were collected by these two
Glasgow graduates. But Hooker was not a mere specialist. His _Journals_
are full of other observations, ethnographical, ornithological, and
entomological. His topographical results especially were of the
highest importance. They formed the basis of a map published by the
Indian Topographical Survey. By the aid of it the operations of
various campaigns and political missions have since been carried to a
successful issue. If he were not known as a Botanist, he would still
have his assured place as a Geographer.
After his return from India, nine years ensued of quiet work at
home. But in 1860 Hooker took part in a scientific visit to Syria
and Palestine, ascending Mount Lebanon, where he specially paid
attention to the decadent condition of the Cedars, his observations
leading later to a general discussion of the genus. Again a period
of ten years intervened, his next objective being Morocco. In 1871,
with Mr Ball and Mr Maw, he penetrated the Atlas Range, never before
examined botanically. His last great journey was in 1877, when he was
sixty years of age. With his old friend, Prof. Asa Gray of Harvard,
he visited Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra
Nevada, and California. Prof. Coulter of Chicago, who was one of the
party in the Rockies, has told me how difficult it was to round up the
two elderly enthusiasts to camp at night.
This is an extraordinary record of travel, especially so when we
remember that all the journeys were fitted into the intervals of an
otherwise busy life of scientific work and administration. At one time
or another he had touched upon every great continental area of the
earth's surface. Many isolated islands had also been examined by him,
especially on the Antarctic voyage. Not only were fresh regions thus
opened up for survey and collection, but each objective of the later
journeys was definitely chosen for scientific reasons. Each expedition
helped to suggest or to solve major problems. Such problems related
not only to the distribution, but also to the very origin of species.
Darwin saw this with unerring judgment as early as 1845. Hooker was
then but twenty-eight years old, and the records of the Antarctic
voyage were only in preparation. Nevertheless Darwin wrote with full
assurance in a letter to Hooker himself: "I know I shall live to see
you the first authority in Europe on that grand subject, that almost
keystone of the laws of Creation, Geographical Distribution." Never
was a forecast more fully justified. But that position, which Hooker
undoubtedly had, could only have been attained through his personal
experience as a traveller. Observation at first hand was the foundation
upon which he chiefly worked. Hooker the traveller prepared the way for
Hooker the philosopher.
Sir Joseph Hooker would probably have declined to consider himself
as a _Geologist_. He was, however, for some eighteen months official
Botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. He was appointed
in April 1846, but relinquished the post in November 1847 in order to
start on his Himalayan journey. During that short period three Memoirs
were published by him on Plants of the Coal Period. They embodied
results derived from the microscopic examination of plant-tissues
preserved in Coal Balls, a study then newly introduced by Witham, and
advanced by Mr Binney. It has since been greatly developed in this
country. Such studies were continued by him at intervals up to 1855.
While he was thus among the first to engage in this branch of enquiry,
he may be said to have originated another line of study, since largely
pursued by geologists. For he examined samples of diatomaceous ooze
from the ocean-floor of the Antarctic, and so initiated the systematic
treatment of the organic deposits of the deep sea. Yet another branch
of geological enquiry was advanced by him in the Himalaya. For there
he made observations on the glaciers of that great mountain chain,
his notes supplying valuable material to both Lyell and Darwin. He
also accumulated valuable data concerning the stupendous effects of
sub-aerial denudation at great elevations. His latest contribution of
a geological character was in 1889, when he returned to an old problem
of his youth, the Silurian fossil _Pachytheca_. But he had to leave the
question of its nature still unsolved. This geological record is not an
extensive one. But the quality and rapidity of the work showed that it
was the time and opportunity and not the faculties that were wanting.
Moreover, it is worthy of remark that the problems he handled were all
nascent at the time he worked upon them.
The list of Sir Joseph Hooker's memoirs which deal _morphologically_
with more limited subjects than is possible in floristic works, is a
restricted one. In 1856 he produced a monograph on the Balanophoraceae,
based upon collections of material from the most varied sources. It
is still an authority very widely quoted on these strange parasites.
In 1859 he described the development and structure of the Pitchers
of _Nepenthes_, while the physiological significance of these, and
other organs of carnivorous plants, formed the subject of an Address
before the British Association at Belfast, in 1874. And in 1863 his
great monograph appeared upon that most remarkable of all Gymnospermic
plants, _Welwitschia_. These works bore the character of a later period
than the time when they were produced. In Britain, between 1840 and
1875, investigation in the laboratory, by microscopic analysis of
tissues, was almost throttled by the overwhelming success of systematic
and descriptive work. The revival of investigation in the laboratory
rather than that in the herbarium dates from about 1875. But we see
that Hooker was one of the few who, prior to that revival, pursued
careful microscopic analysis side by side with systematic and floristic
work.
The noble establishment of the Royal Gardens at Kew is often spoken of
as the Mecca of Botanists. It is also the Paradise of the populace of
London. It was the Hookers, father and son, who made Kew what it is.
When we contemplate Sir Joseph as an _administrator_, we immediately
think of the great establishment which he and his father ruled during
the first half century of its history as a public institution. Kew had
existed for long as a Royal Appanage before it was handed over to the
Nation. The Botanic Garden had, indeed, ranked for upwards of half a
century as the richest in the world. But after the death of King George
III. it had retrograded scientifically. On the accession of Queen
Victoria a revision of the Royal Household had become necessary. It
was then decided to transfer the garden to the Commissioners of Woods
and Forests. This took place in 1840, and in 1841 Sir William Hooker,
who was then Professor in Glasgow, was appointed the first Director.
The move to Kew, whither he took his private Library, Herbarium, and
Museum, was carried out in the absence of his son, who was still in
the Antarctic. It was not till the Himalayan journey was over in 1851
that Sir Joseph settled at Kew, his great collections having already
been consigned there by agreement with the Government. In 1855 he was
appointed assistant to his father in the Directorship. Finally, he
became himself Director on his father's death in 1865, and he held the
position for twenty years.
So long associated together, it is difficult to disentangle the parts
that father and son actually played in the creation of Kew as it now
is. Nor is there need to attempt it. The original area of the Garden
at Kew was less than 20 acres. But in 1855, when Sir Joseph joined his
father in the directorate, it had grown by successive additions to 70
acres. Finally, the large area of 650 acres came under the Director's
control. Numerous large glass houses were built. Three Museums
were established, and the vast Herbarium and Library founded and
developed. The Garden Staff rose to more than 100 men. The day-by-day
administration of such an establishment would necessarily make great
demands upon the time, energy, tact, and skill of its official head.
But in addition there was the growing correspondence to be attended
to, on the one hand with botanists all over the world, on the other
with the Government Departments, and especially with the Indian and
Colonial Offices. As the activity of the Garden extended, there grew up
a large staff of scientific experts and artists, whose duties centred
round the Herbarium and Library. These all looked to the Director for
their guidance and control. The descriptive work prepared by them for
publication took formidable dimensions. The production of the Floras
of India, and of the Colonies, the publication of which was conducted
under Government subvention, had to be organised and carried through.
These matters are mentioned here so as to give some idea of the extent
and complexity of the work which was being carried on at Kew. For ten
years as Assistant Director, and for twenty years as Director, Sir
Joseph Hooker guided this complex machine. The efficiency of his rule
was shown by the increasing estimation in which the Garden was held by
all who were able to judge.