WILLIAM GRIFFITH
1810—1845
By W. H. LANG
Early training—medical appointment under the East India Company—his travels—the magnitude of his collections—his method of work—results of researches mainly published posthumously—the ovule and fertilisation—Santalum—Loranthaceae—Balanophora—Avicennia—his gymnosperm work illustrated by Cycas—discovery of the pollen-chamber—Rhizocarps and Liverworts—pre-Hofmeisterian work—Griffith's relation to his times.
It might have been assumed that all the names of British botanists whose work has been or is to be considered in this course of lectures would have been familiar to their successors of to-day, even if their works were too often neglected for the last words of scientific progress in a summary of literature. The question has however been put to me by more than one botanist in the last month or two, "But who was Griffith?" That this should be possible seems in itself ample justification for including his name in this list of British botanists.
For Griffith has claims to be regarded as a great botanist. It is true that he failed to break through the limitations of his time and period—that he left no new and more correct general views to modify the science. But this is true of all his contemporaries, indeed it is true of most botanists. To recreate the department of a science in which a man labours requires a combination of ability and fortunate chance that is given to few.
Griffith had the ability, the power of independent observation, the readiness to speculate, the careless prodigality of labour. He did not however, in the fraction of an ordinary working life that
