Among the many illustrious names that figure on the syllabus of the present course of lectures, that of Harvey is probably one of the less generally known. This is due for the most part to the fact that the subject to which the greater portion of his energies was devoted--the systematic study of seaweeds--occupies a somewhat remote niche in the edifice of botany. Also many years of his life were spent in collecting in distant regions; and his retiring disposition, and comparatively early death, contributed to the same result. In the scientific world of his day he avoided publicity, but laboured with indomitable zeal at his chosen subject, leaving behind him a series of splendidly illustrated descriptive works. For a glimpse of the man himself--his life, his aims, his thoughts--we have to rely almost entirely on a volume[107] consisting mainly of letters written to relations and to family friends, which was edited by his cousin, Mrs Lydia Fisher, and published a few years after his death. My indebtedness to this volume in what follows will be apparent. [Illustration: _Plate XVII_ WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY] William Henry Harvey came of the old Quaker stock that has given to Ireland several of her most enthusiastic naturalists. To this group belong Thomas Wright of Cork, Joseph Wright of Belfast, Greenwood Pim of Dublin; all of whom, immersed in affairs of business, devoted their leisure hours to science, and progressed far in the branches of zoology or botany to which they addressed themselves. Harvey's family belonged to Youghal, on the coast of Co. Cork. His father was a well-known merchant of Limerick, in which town he himself was born, the youngest of eleven children, just a hundred years ago--in February 1811. Even as a child, his love of natural history made itself apparent, and fortunately his schooling tended to foster this taste. After a few years at Newtown near Waterford, he went to the historic school of Ballitore, in the county of Kildare. These Irish Quaker schools have long favoured the teaching of science, and Ballitore at that time was no exception. The head master was James White, a keen naturalist, and himself a writer on Irish botany[108]; and probably the encouragement that young Harvey received at Ballitore had much to do with the shaping of his life. At the age of fifteen, we find him writing of his collection of butterflies and shells, and already referring to the group in which he subsequently achieved his greatest fame:--