It may perhaps be acceptable in this place to afford a few extracts from the private letters of Mr. Griffith, especially those in which he adverts with a liberality of feeling to his contemporaries, no less honourable to himself than to the persons mentioned.

The following notes addressed to his uncle, at various periods, exhibit the sentiments with which he regarded the late Mr. Bauer not merely as an artist, but original observer.

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From letters of Mr. GRIFFITH, to Mr. MEYER.

Mergui:  January 17th, 1835.

“My last accounts of Mr. Bauer state him to have been in excellent health:  he had just completed some more of his unrivalled drawings.”

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Suddya:  December 30th, 1836.

“Pray give the compliments of the season to Mr. Bauer, to whom I look up with the greatest admiration:  what a pity it is for science that such a life as his is not renewable ad libitum.  Tell him that I have a beautiful new genus allied to Rafflesia, the flowers of which are about a span across, it is dioecious and icosandrous, and has an abominable smell.  How I look back occasionally on my frequent and delightful visits to Kew.”

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To MRS. H—–.

Serampore, Calcutta:  July 22nd, 1841.

“I was aware of the departure of Mr. Bauer through the Athenaeum, in which an excellent notice of him appeared.  He certainly was a man to whom I looked up with constant admiration:  he was incomparable in several respects, and I am happy to find, that his death was so characteristic of his most inoffensive and meritorious life.  It is also very pleasing to me to find that he continued to think well of me.  How I should have been able to delight him had he lived a few years longer.”

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Calcutta:  June, 1843.

“Poor Mr. Bauer, we never shall see his like again, I have seen but few notices of his life, which assuredly is worthy of study.  There is not a place I shall visit with better feelings than Kew, it has so many pleasant associations even from my school-days.”

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Calcutta:  December 31st, 1843.

“Mr. Bauer is not half appreciated yet; he is considered a very great artist, but what is that to what he was?  But he did not fight for his own hand, though he worked hard enough in all conscience.  Mr. Bauer in fact preceded all in the train of discovery:  he saw in 1797, what others did not see till 30 years after.  For instance, the elongation of the pollens’ inner membrane into a tube, the first step towards the complete knowledge we now have of vegetable embryogeny.  Unfortunately, Mr. Bauer drew, but did not write, and when I recall to mind a remark of Mr. Brown, that it was a disadvantage to be able to draw, I always fancy he had Bauer in his mind’s