Hence my task has become merely that of an editor whose chief duty is to fit the material provided by two distinguished contributors into the prescribed space. Whatever credit is due to this first attempt to sketch the career of Lindley, belongs to these two gentlemen whose remarkable kindness I have great pleasure in acknowledging. _Outline of Career._ John Lindley was born on February 5, 1799, in Catton near Norwich. His father, George Lindley, who came of an old Yorkshire family, conducted a large nursery and fruit business in Catton. To the facts that John Lindley became in early years an accomplished field botanist and also learned much of practical horticulture may be ascribed the close touch which he maintained throughout his botanical career with the practical side of botany. It is not too much to say that John Lindley was the unique representative of a class of man which he himself declared had never existed, namely one which combined the qualities of a good physiologist with those of a practical gardener of the greatest experience. John Lindley's youthful ambition was however to be not a savant but a soldier, and though, owing to the inability of his father to buy him a commission, that ambition was not fulfilled, the instinct which prompted it found frequent expression throughout Lindley's life. As his career demonstrates, he was a first class fighting man. The curious may find in the pages of the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ records of the combats which he waged on behalf of horticulture and we shall have occasion presently to refer to the most important of all his campaigns in the cause of science. When John Lindley was about 19 or 20 years of age his father's affairs became involved, and the son with an impulsiveness as just as it was foolish insisted, against the advice of friends, on becoming surety for the father. The mill-stone of financial anxiety thus early hung about his neck caused him trouble throughout his life. Possessed of nothing but youth, a sound education, great natural ability and one good friend, John Lindley at the age of 20 left Norfolk for London. Thanks to a letter of introduction from the friend (Sir William Hooker) he obtained a post as assistant-librarian to Sir Joseph Banks. He thus gained access to a good library and became acquainted with a large number of men, both English and foreign, interested in scientific subjects. That he made the most of his opportunities is evident, for we find him at 21 a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a member of the Bonn Academy of Natural History. In 1822 began Lindley's long connection with the Horticultural Society, which he served first as Garden Assistant-Secretary, then (1826-1860) as Assistant-Secretary and finally as Secretary. The portrait which accompanies this sketch is a reproduction of that painted by Mr Eddis, R.A., at the instance of friends of Lindley about the time of his resignation of the Secretaryship of the Horticultural Society.