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CHARLES DARWIN.

Please permit a practical gardener to lay a wreathe on the bier of our great teacher. It is impossible for me to express my full indebtedness to him. I had hoped to discharge some of the debt in a paper on Pangenesis I had intended to read some years ago at Nottingham; but now he is gone one can hardly keep silence, though I have little or nothing to add to what you so well said last week on the character of the man, his mode of working, the extent of his researches, and the extreme value of his labours; but you cannot so well estimate what mental quickening and pleasure Darwin brought to hundreds — probably thousands — of all but unknown practical horticulturists. His facts, so carefully collated, so powerfully marshalled, brought new light, fresh inspirations, a higher intellectual life to myriads of plodding workers in the field of horticulture. Often because of the hardness of the labour, work and thought have been too much divorced. Darwin, as it were, thought on our behalf, and placed his thoughts before us buttressed up with such an array of clear concrete facts that we could not fail to appreciate his thoughts through his facts; or, if we did so fail, yet were we all the richer by the number and value of his facts. It is astonishing how much one hears in general society of Darwin's theories and how little of his facts. I do not know how it may have struck other students of his works, but I have been amazed at his reverent timidity in heaping up fact upon fact until they seemed piled to a mountain height, and all pointing to one conclusion; and then, instead of anything like dogmatic conclusions or assumptions, merely a mild supposition, or "maybe so." Would that we could imitate our great teacher in the strength of our facts and the timidity of our conclusions therefrom.

The facts brought together in the two volumes, his Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication, and his wonderful work on the Fertilisation of Orchids, may be looked upon as an encyclopaedia for practical horticulturists, and they are collected from all sources, and appear to have been also retested by personal experiment before receiving currency from Mr. Darwin. No one who has not read these works carefully, as well as the Origin of Species and the other works and papers of the author, can form any idea of the immensity of the labour that they involved.

Of the results of his labours to practical horticulture it is almost as yet too early to write. You appear to me to form a very moderate estimate of their practical value, and it will not be until the major portion of Darwin's facts are known and thoroughly understood, and their far-reaching results grasped by practical horticulturists, that the richer fruits of bis labours will begin to appear.

For not only are Darwin's facts valuable in themselves, but most of them are like living seeds and will originate species, genera, varieties of similar or correlative facts; and this horticultural knowledge will root deeper, spread wider and rise higher, and its practice also be improved through all coming ages by the labour and example of Charles Darwin, for not only the work done but the manner of doing it are invaluable.

One trait in his character that endeared him to many of us must not go unnoticed. No practical man, however humble his station, that had a fact to record was considered unworthy of his notice or a note of thanks. He also seemed to have scanned our horticultural literature with an eagle eye, and to have gleaned from thence all the facts that served to illustrate his point or bore upon his purpose, verifying his extracts with references.

In losing Darwin few among us but feel we have lost a friend as well as a great teacher. No man has done more to raise horticulture than he who has been laid in his right place in the Great Abbey. His friends may be assured that he lives in the hearts of many among us, and being dead he will yet speak to us through his marvellous works, which have done so much and will yet do more to raise the science and practice of horticulture, as well as botany, to a higher, broader, nobler level than either of them has ever reached heretofore. D. T. Fish.