14 DECEMBER 1945, Page 14

COUNTRY LIFE

Zr is welcome news, as I learn from one of those concerned, that much of the scientific work of Dr. Durham is to be preserved at King's- College, Cambridge. It would have been a strange thing if the monument of such a man, to whom humanity owes much, should have been found only in Herefordshire cider orchards. One of the admirers of his achievements in biology suggests that the absence of obituary regrets from The Times and other papers was due to Dr. Durham's extreme modesty. " He was the most modest of men "—a true verdict. Indeed, as I found, he could hardly be induced to speak of his own distinguished part in the historic Ross Expedition. He 'sore his weight of learning and intellect "like a flower," and his delight in little experiments in his own modest garden was almost boy-like. Though his greater achievement lies elsewhere, it is to be hoped that the orchard collections of the rarer sorts of apple and pear that he so eagerly collected and helped to collect will remain. A number would have wholly disappeared but for the happy thought of such a research. It would be a suitable epitaph for them as for his host from some Herefordshire chronicler: Si monumentunt requiris circumspice.