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 262 It contains much that could not easily be dealt with in any other way.

It was soon apparent that we had got hold of a man of exceptional ability. It must be confessed that the atmosphere was stimulating, and the conditions under which the teaching was carried on necessitated its being given at high pressure. I remember that on one occasion Ward fainted at his work, from no other cause, I think, than over-excitement. In the autumn of the same year he went for one session to Owens College, Manchester, with the object of continuing his general education. I learn that he carried off the prizes in every subject that he took up.

In the succeeding year I was glad to avail myself of the assistance of Ward as demonstrator in a subsequent course at South Kensington, which I undertook with Prof. Vines. Later in the year he became a candidate for and secured an open scholarship at Christ's College, where Vines himself was then a Fellow, and went into residence in October, 1876.

Ward took full advantage of his opportunities at Cambridge, and attended the teaching of Sir Michael Foster in physiology and of Prof. F. M. Balfour in comparative anatomy. The sound and fundamental conceptions which he acquired from the former manifestly influenced his work throughout life. He took a first class in botany in the Natural Science Tripos in 1879. His first published paper was the result of work in the same year in the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew. In this, which was published in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, he seriously criticised and corrected that of Vesque on the embryo-sac of Phanerogams.

As was customary with our young botanists, Ward went to Germany for a short time, for purposes of study and to strengthen his knowledge of the language. He worked at Würzburg with Sachs, whose lectures on the physiology of plants he afterwards translated in 1887. There he continued his study of the embryo-sac in Orchideae, as Sachs subsequently testified, "zu meiner vollsten Zufriedenheit."

Before the end of the year Ward was appointed on the recommendation of Kew to proceed to Ceylon for two years as Government Cryptogamist to investigate the leaf-disease in