KNIGHT, THOMAS ANDREW, brother of the subject of the preceding article, was born on the 10th of October 1753. The grand father of these eminent men had amassed a large fortune, as an iron master at a period long before steam machinery was introduced iu the smelting and manufacture of iron. When young, Thomas Knight's education was so much neglected, that when, at the age of niue years, he was sent to school at Ludlow, he was scarcely able to do more than read. But the days of his childhood had not been passed with out employment. lie had a great turn for the observation of natural phenomena, and having been left to occupy himself in the country in what way he pleased, he had already formed a close practical acquaint ance with such plants and animals as Herefordshire could furnish. Eventually he graduated at Ballo] College, Oxford, and subsequently occupied himself with researches into various points of vegetable and animal physiology. One of the most remarkable of his early investi gations was contained in a paper read before the Royal Society iu 1795, upon the inheritance of disease among fruit-trees, and upon the propa gation of debility by grafting. The county of Hereford had long been celebrated for the produce of its orchards, and the cider made therefrom was in high esteem ; but towards the latter part of the last century the trees of the most esteemed eorts became gradually less productive, their vitality being nearly exhausted. Still the old practice of grafting young stocks with the debilitated shoots of these trees generally prevailed, till Mr. Knight, after a long course of interesting experi ments, satisfied himself that there is no renewal of vitality by the process of grafting, but merely a continuation of declining life, and that young grafted stocks soon became as much diseased as the old parent trees, lie then commenced a course of experiments by fertilising the blossoms of some hardy crabs or apples with the pollen taken from the flowers of the most celebrated dessert and cider fruits, and sowing the seeds thus artificially impregnated. From that time Mr. Knight was looked up to in this country as a vegetable physiologist of a high order; a character which he ably sustained by various experimental researches into vegetable fecundation, the ascent and desccut of sap in trees, the phenomena of germination, the influence of light upon leaves, and a variety of similar subjects. In 1797 he published a small
work called 'A Treatise ou the Culture of the Apple and Pear, and on the Ilauufacture of Cider and Perry;' in which he recommends raising new kinds from seed, and suiting the sorts produced to the peculiarities of soil and climate, which ar• found to have ao great an influence on the quality of cider. Mr. Kuight did not confine his experiments to the improvement of the apple only, but he raised many pears must valuable for the dessert, and so hardy as not to require the warmth and shelter of walls, and consequently capable of being cultivated by every farmer and cottager in the country. His seedling plums, straw berries, nectarines, and potatoes are also of great value, and an important addition to the luxuries and necessaries of life.
The great object of this distinguished man seems to have been in all cases utility. It was chiefly to questions which he thought likely to lead to important practical results that his attention was directed ; and the numerous papers communicated by him to the Transactions' of the Horticultural Society, in the chair of which he succeeded his friend Sir Joseph Banks, have all this distinguishing feature. No one who has traced the progress of horticultural skill for the last half century, can be ignorant that it is very largely, if not mainly due to the writings and practice of Mr. Knight : he was probably the best practical gardener of his day. It ie however not a little remarkable that with so very extensive a knowledge of the facts of vegetable physiology, he should have been so unfortunato as he certainly was in many of his explanations of them. This arose no doubt from his unacqnaintence with vegetable anatomy, and consequently with the minute means by which Nature brings about her results in organised matter. Mr. Knight was also a close observer of the habits of animals, and one of his last communications to the Royal Society was on the subject of animal instinct. He died in London on the 11th of May 1838, in the eightieth year of his age.