Makers of British Botany; a collection of biographies by living botanists
History
Makers of British Botany; a collection of biographies by living botanists
Botanists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Botany -- Great Britain -- History
From his letters, and from the reminiscences of persons who remember
him, one gathers that Harvey was a very lovable sort of man. Shy
and retiring, and diffident as to his own powers, with a deeply
affectionate nature, he was equally prone to singing the praises of his
friends, and to disparaging himself. "If I lean to glorify any one," he
writes to William Thompson of Belfast, "it is Mrs Griffiths, to whom I
owe much of the little acquaintance I have with the variations to which
these plants [the seaweeds] are subject, and who is always ready to
supply me with fruits of plants which every one else finds barren. She
is worth ten thousand other collectors." Writing of Harveya, a genus
of South African Scrophularineae which Hooker had just named in his
honour, he comments, "'Tis _apropos_ to give me a genus of Parasites,
as I am one of those weak characters that draw their pleasures from
others, and their support and sustenance too, seeing I quickly pine, if
I have not some one to torment." He in his turn loved to commemorate
his friends, or others in whom he felt an interest, by naming after
them new genera of plants--Apjohnia, Areschougia, Ballia, Backhousia,
Bellotia, Bowerbankia, Drummondita, Curdiea, Greyia, Mackaya, and
many others. The names of some of his favourite authors are similarly
enshrined, as Crabbea, Evelyna. Indeed, when at Niagara he saw an
inscription to a young lady who fell over the cliff when gathering
flowers--
Miss Ruggs at the age of twenty-three
Was launched into eternity,
he comments "Poor thing! I must call a plant after her--_Ruggia_ would
sound well." He had indeed a love of all living things. Writing to
Mrs Gray on the death of her favourite dog, he tells how he felt so
ashamed of being so deeply moved when in South Africa by the death of
his pet ostrich, that he foreswore any similar entanglement, and kept
his vow ever since. Of serious griefs he had many; the death of several
beloved brothers and sisters who predeceased him, would have been well
nigh intolerable to him but for the profound religious feeling which
sustained and helped him throughout life, and which robbed death of all
its terrors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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