Allan Octavian Hume, C.B./South London Botanic Institute
The South London Botanic Institute.
This memoir, as a narrative, must conclude with his work in a branch of natural science which, until his later years, he had not systematically explored—botany, the study of "every herb that sips the dew." Mr. W. H. Griffin, Curator of the South London Botanic Institute, which he founded and endowed, has been so good as to prepare an expert statement of his labours in this connection, labours which would have alone filled up the life of an ordinary man. In order to verify the existing catalogues of local plants, he used to spend his summer holidays in some important district, such as Devon, Cornwall, Upper Teesdale in Yorkshire, and the Peak in Derbyshire; and on one occasion I visited him at Looe, where he was engaged in personally investigating the Cornish flora, detecting the appearance or disappearance of local rarities, "escapes," and "undesirable aliens." Owing to its almost insular position, with its mild and moist climate, Cornwall offers peculiar features of interest to the botanist, and the flotsam and jetsam of the numberless vessels coming up the Channel from distant lands, constantly bring strange seeds to germinate in the creeks and harbours of the rocky coast. To stroll in converse with him over cliff and moor was in itself a liberal education. Also at his home I was sometimes privileged to see him at work, in his "peaceful hermitage"; to watch his beautiful manipulation of the dried specimens ; and to note the zeal he inspired in his co-workers. Mr. Griffin writes as follows regarding the Botanic Institute :
"I have thought it well in the first place to state the circumstances under which Mr. Hume first engaged me as his botanical assistant, because an illustration of the benevolence of his character is thus afforded.
"In and previously to the year 1900 I had contributed to a Kentish newspaper a weekly article on natural history subjects, many of which were descriptive of the flora of West Kent and East Surrey. Early in 1900 I received, through the editor of the paper, a letter from Mr. Hume, to whom I was then unknown, stating that he desired to add to his herbarium specimens of the orchideous and other plants mentioned in my articles, and requesting me to name a time and place where he could see me. This resulted in Mr. Hume calling upon me at my residence in a south-east London suburb, and an arrangement was made that I should collect and press for Mr. Hume specimens of all the more valuable species I could find, and from time to time send to him in Cornwall, where he was proposing to spend the season collecting plants, lists of what I might collect, he engaging to defray my travelling and other incidental expenses He explained that upon principle he never purchased plants gathered in Britain, because such a practice some- times led to the extirpation of rare species, and I quite accorded with his views in that respect.
"I was then engaged in business in the City of London, but from April to October in that year I devoted every Saturday afternoon, and frequently the whole of Sunday, and each of the bank holidays, exclusively to collecting plants for Mr. Hume. At this time I was also the honorary secretary of a natural history society which, in co-operation with a few friends, I had assisted in forming in 1897. At the end of October 1900, my health broke down, and I was the recipient of much kindness and help from Mr. Hume until, in the spring of 1901, my strength was somewhat restored, when he engaged me as his botanical assistant.
"I had been accustomed to botanize in the country |about the village of Down, in Kent, where the late Dr. ' Darwin resided during the last forty years of his life ; and in April 1901 I took Mr. Hume to certain spots at Down and in the Vale of Cudham, which had been Dr. Darwin's haunts and where he obtained many of the plants men- tioned in his famous work on *The Fertilization of Orchids.' In the same month I also accompanied him to Saffron Walden, in Essex, to collect specimens of Primula elatior, a plant which in England grows only upon the chalky boulder-clay. Our only information was that it grew somewhere to the north-west of the railway station, and we proceeded along a road in that direction. I had for many years devoted attention to geology, and perceiving on a roadside bank of clay some worn fragments of rock which I knew were foreign to Essex, I pointed them out to Mr. Hume, with the remark: 'We are on the boulder-clay. Those stones were brought here by ice.' "Mr. Hume at once appreciated the inference, and W then learned that in his youth he had studied geology, and had known Dr. Mantell, who first discovered remains of the Iguanodon and other Saurians in Weal- den Beds, in Sussex. At this period I also accompanied Mr. Hume to Hawkhurst, in Kent, to obtain specimens of Cardamine hiilhifera. These outings proved to me that Mr. Hume possessed the ready perception of a naturalist experienced in field work. Many who have limited their study of the natural sciences to the library and laboratory are quite at a loss in the field. I have pointed out a rare plant growing amidst other herbage to more than one such student, and they have failed to detect it until their eyes were within two or three feet of it.
"When I first became assistant to Mr. Hume he informed me that if he lived long enough to accumulate a sufficiently large collection of plants his object was to establish an institute to assist amateur botanists whose business occupation did not permit them to resort to the British Museum of Natural History and to Kew Gardens to consult the botanical Hbraries and herbarium specimens . there deposited. In my own experience as an amateur I had found that, while I could generally identify indi- genous British plants with the aid of Bentham and Hooker's * Flora ' and Babington's * Manual/ the alien species frequently met with as garden-escapes and accidental introductions with farm seeds, fodder, etc., occasioned me great difficulty and loss of time; and upon my representing this to Mr. Hume, he decided that his herbarium should comprise all species recorded as having been found quasi-wild in Britain.
"To obtain specimens of the latter he obtained cata- logues fr9m German botanists and purchased many sheets of specimens. Some of these were carelessly pressed ; others had been grown in Continental gardens, and as I had had considerable experience as an amateur horticulturist Mr. Hume ultimately allotted to my use a considerable por- tion of the garden attached to his residence. Seeds were obtained from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and from similar establishments in France and Austria, and the growing of alien plants for preservation as botanical specimens became a portion of my work, in which Mr. Hume took a deep interest. He delighted in showing these alien plants to his friends and in telling them where the species had been found in a quasi-wild state in Britain.
"At the end of April 190T, Mr. Hume went to Cornwall to continue the collecting of Cornish plants which he had commenced the previous year, and he remained there until October. He made a large collection that year, frequently being assisted by Mr. F. H. Davey, F.L.S., the author of a most excellent flora of Cornwall published in 1909. From May to September 1902 Mr. Hume collected on Dartmoor and the neighbouring parts of Devon, and through October in North Cornwall. In May 1903 he went to Upper Teesdale, Yorkshire, and remained there collecting until October, working during a small portion of the time with Mr. H. W. Pugsley, F.L.S., and Mr. H. S. Thompson, F.L.S. In 1903 Mr. B. T. Lowne, my co- secretary of the Catford and District Natural History Society, exhibited at the Congress of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies some mounted plants, and upon the same sheet with each flowering specimen was a seedling of the species.
"During the congress Miss Ethel Sargent, F.L.S., a well- known experimental botanist, made public reference to the few mounted seedlings, and said that if any botanist would take the trouble to grow and preserve at different stages a comprehensive collection of seedlings it would be invaluable for reference. I submitted the suggestion to Mr. Hume, and after some demur at the labour which it would entail, and because neither he nor I would live to complete it, he consented to my starting it in the spring of 1904. The herbarium now contains mounted seed- lings, taken at progressive stages, of 1200 species, representing 385 genera and 64 natural orders. As a collection, so far as we know, it is unique in Europe, and it is being added to every year as seeds can be obtained. The addition of horticulture to my herbarium and clerical work rendered it necessary to obtain additional assistance in mounting plants and cataloguing, and when the herbarium and library were removed from Mr. Hume's residence we were employing four young women in pressing, mounting, and clerical work, and a youth as assistant in horticultural work.
"During the summer of 1904 Mr. Hume made frequent short excursions into Kent, Surrey, Sussex, etc., to collect species in which the herbarium was deficient. In 1905 he collected plants in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and South Wales from April until May, and in North Wales, in company with Mr. C. P. Hurst, one of the most active of English field-botanists, from June to October. In 1906 he was at Folkestone in August and September, and collected largely in that part of Kent. In 1907 he made Eastbourne his headquarters during August and Sep- tember, and did much field-work in company with the late Mr. T. Hilton, of Brighton. In 1908 he only left home during the month of September, when he went again to Folkestone. In 1909 and 1910 he was at East- bourne during August and September, and made many excursions for collecting Sussex plants, frequently in company with Mr. Hilton.
A Gift to South London.
"In 1910 Mr. Hume purchased the freehold premises, No. 323 Norwood Road, S.E., and adapted them for the reception of his herbarium and Hbrary, and the garden fitted for growing the remaining alien plants required for the herbarium. The whole establishment was removed there in November of that year, and the freehold premises, with the herbarium, library, and all appliances and furni- ture, and a capital endowment to provide an income sufficient to maintain the establishment, were vested in trustees and incorporated under the title of * The South London Botanical Institute,' with the object, as stated in the registered articles of association, of ' promoting, encouraging, and facilitating, amongst the residents of South London, the study of the science of botany.'
"Mr. Hume had strong objections to advertising, and more especially to advertise his own bounty ; and for that reason would have no public opening of the institute, but he somewhat reluctantly consented to the issue of a prospectus to natural history and kindred societies informing them that the herbarium and library were available for the use of their members gratis. When I first became Mr. Hume's assistant he impressed upon me the fact that, as a rule, the preparation of plants for herbarium specimens was done in an inartistic and some- times slovenly manner, whereas there was no reason why every sheet should not be made to look like a picture. He instructed me in his own painstaking method of laying out and pressing specimens, which I have adopted and passed on to the members of our staff who now perform the work. The following incident illustrates the result. With Mr. Hume's full approbation I have for several years exhibited a selection of our specimens at the annual congress of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies. Upon one of these occasions the specimens were seen by one of the trustees of the British Museum (Natural History). That gentleman told me that the specimens were quite a new departure in her- barium work, and that there was nothing to equal them in the various collections at the Museum.
"In the several occupations in which I have been en- gaged I have had considerable experience in mechanical work of yarious kinds, and I soon found that Mr. Hume also was very ready at devising mechanical appliances. Between us we designed a system of iron racks and cabinets for the herbarium by means of which specimen of any species are immediately accessible ; and I believ our system is to be adopted in one department of the British Museum of Natural History.
"When I joined Mr. Hume in 1901 his British her- barium consisted of between 2000 and 3000 sheets. There are now more than 40,000 sheets of these plants, every one of which passed through Mr. Hume's hands for critical examination before it was mounted.
"The late Mr. Frederick Townsend, F.L.S., an eminent botanist, who died in 1905, left instructions that after his death his herbarium and botanical library should be given to Mr. Hume for the purposes of the institute, which was then in contemplation ; and in February 1906 Mr. Hume took me with him to Honington Hall, near Shipston-on-Stour, Mr. Townsend's former resi- dence, to arrange for its transfer to Norwood. After this, until the end of 191 1, every moment which Mr. Hume could spare from other duties was occupied by him in going through the general collection of European plants formed by Mr. Townsend and giving them out for mounting. Then, in 1910, the late Mr. W. H. Beeby, F.L.S., another eminent botanist, who had formed what is probably the only collection of North Isles (Shetland and the Orkneys) plants in Europe, also left instructions at his death for that and his other collections to be made over to Mr. Hume.
"Incessant industry was Mr. Hume's own practice, and he very naturally expected every one about him to follow him in this respect. He was intensely impatient with anything approaching idleness or lack of interest in their work on the part of those whom he employed, but, at the same time, most considerate and generous in the case of sickness. Those who knew him best could not but entertain for him reverent esteem and affection, and we who constituted his botanical staff feel that we have lost not only a considerate employer, but a fatherly friend."