Page:Makers of British botany.djvu/342

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HARRY MARSHALL WARD

complied with the demands which the scientific world makes on its members; he served on the Councils of the Royal (1895) and Linnean (1887) Societies; he was President of the Botanical Section of the British Association at Toronto in 1897, and of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1904. Beyond all this he found time to give addresses with unfailing freshness of insight; a lecture at the Royal Institution on April 27, 1894, on the "Action of Light on Bacteria and Fungi" was a notable performance; he wrote numerous articles of a more popular kind, and he produced a number of excellent manuals for students on subjects connected with forest, agricultural and pathological botany. Activity so strenuous almost exceeds the limits of human possibility.

Under the influence of Sachs, Ward might have become a distinguished morphologist. But his work in Ceylon led him into a field of research from which he never deviated. A survey of his performance as a whole, such as I have attempted, has a scientific interest of its own. His research was not haphazard. A continuous and developing thread of thought runs through it all. The fundamental problem was the transference of the nutrition of one organism to the service of another. Of this, in Ceylon, Ward found himself confronted with two extreme types, and of both he made an exhaustive study. In Hemileia it was ruthless parasitism; in Strigula advantageous commensalism. Bornet put Schwendener's theory on a firm foundation when he effected the synthesis of a lichen; Ward, in another group, did the same thing for the ginger-beer plant. In such cases the partnership is beneficial. The problem is to trace the process by which one partner gets the upper hand and becomes merely predatory. Ward inherited a strong taste for music, though I believe he never cultivated it. A musical simile may not inappropriately be applied to his work. In its whole it presents itself to me as a symphony in which the education of protoplasm is a recurring leit-motiv.

A few words must be said as to his personal characteristics. He had all the qualifications for the kind of research to which he devoted himself. He was singularly dexterous and skilful in manipulation. He was a refined and accomplished draughtsman,