Some years ago I made a pilgrimage to Teddington and found, in the parish registers, many interesting entries by his hand; the last in a tremulous writing is on November 4th, 1760, two months before he died. He was clearly an active parish priest. He made his female parishioners do public penance when he thought they deserved it: he did much for the fabric of the church. "In 1754[26] he helped the parish to a decent water supply and characteristically records, in the parish register, that the outflow was such as to fill a two-quart vessel in 'three swings of a pendulum beating seconds, which pendulum was 39 + 2/10 inches long from the suspending nail to the middle of the plumbet or bob'." Under the tower he helped to build (which now serves as a porch) Stephen Hales is buried, and the stone which covers his body is being worn away by the feet of the faithful. By the piety of a few botanists a mural tablet, on which the epitaph is restored, has been placed near the grave. Horace Walpole called Hales "a poor, good, primitive creature" and Pope[27] (who was his neighbour) said "I shall be very glad to see Dr Hales, and always love to see him, he is so worthy and good a man." Peter Collinson writes of "his constant serenity and cheerfulness of mind"; it is also recorded that "he could look even upon wicked men, and those who did him unkind offices, without any emotion of particular indignation; not from want of discernment or sensibility; but he used to consider them only like those experiments which, upon trial, he found could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he therefore calmly and dispassionately laid aside." Hales' work may be divided into three heads: I. Physiological, animal and vegetable; II. Chemical; III. Inventions and miscellaneous essays. Under No. I. I shall deal only with his work on plants. The last heading (No. III.) I shall only refer to slightly, but the variety and ingenuity of his miscellaneous publications is perhaps worth mention here as an indication of the quality of his mind. It seems to me to have had something in common with the versatile ingenuity of Erasmus Darwin and of his grandson Francis Galton. The miscellaneous work also exhibits Hales as a philanthropist, who cared passionately for bettering the health and comfort of his fellow creatures by improving their conditions of life. His chief book from the physiological and chemical point of view is his _Vegetable Staticks_. It will be convenient to begin with the physiological part of this book, and refer to the chemistry later. _Vegetable Staticks_ is a small 8vo of 376 pages, dated on the title-page 1727. The "_Imprimatur_ Isaac Newton Pr. Reg. Soc." is dated February 16, 1726/7, and this date is of some slight interest, for Newton died on March 20, and _Vegetable Staticks_ must have been one of the last books he signed.