William Griffith was a London botanist. He was the son of a London merchant, born on March 4, 1810, at Ham Common. Having finished school he began to prepare for the medical profession and was apprenticed to a surgeon in the West end of London. About 1829 he commenced attendance at the classes in the newly established University College. He had earlier in life shown an interest in natural history but was now specially devoted to botany. He attended Lindley's lectures, and also studied medical botany under Mr Anderson at the Apothecaries' Garden in Chelsea. There he obtained the Linnean Gold Medal given by the Society of Apothecaries. At this time also he was a frequent visitor to Kew Gardens where he was on good terms with the head gardener and also came under the influence of Mr Bauer the great botanical draughtsman of his day. Griffith was never tired of expressing his admiration for Bauer as an accurate observer. During his vacations Griffith made botanical excursions in England, carrying his light baggage and his equipment for collecting plants.
That the training that Griffith received in botany in the London University of that date was a sound one is shown by his power of facing the most various problems when cast on his own resources immediately at the close of his University training. The soundness of his training is further shown by the small pieces of original work he had published before leaving England at the age of 22. Not only had he made some of the illustrations for Lindley's Introduction to Botany and had described the flower and the structure of the wood of Phytocrene gigantea in Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae Rariores, but (a noteworthy indication of his interest in Cryptogams at this time) he had supplied an account of the structure and development of Targionia hypophylla to be appended to Mirbel's classic monograph on the anatomy and physiology of Marchantia polymorpha—published in 1832.
His medical studies finished, Griffith sailed from England in May 1832, he arrived at Madras in September and was appointed Assistant-Surgeon on the Madras establishment in the service of the East India Company. His scientific work was done in the intervals of a busy life. Only a man of great energy and enthusiasm and possessed of great powers of physical endurance could have done the work that Griffith crowded into the 12½ years, between his landing in India and his death at Malacca before the age of 35 on February 9, 1845. This time was all spent in the East Indies—he never returned to England.
Deferring for the moment consideration of his scientific work we may take a general survey of Griffith's movements during his working life and of his labours as an explorer and collector.
After spending some months in the neighbourhood of Madras, he was situated for more than two years at Mergui and collected extensively in Tenasserim. He was recalled to Calcutta in 1835 and attached to the Bengal Presidency in order to be sent with Dr Wallich and Mr M'Clelland to visit and inspect the localities in which tea grew wild in Assam. Griffith's full report on this enquiry led to the important economic conclusion (based largely on a critical comparison of the Assam flora with the flora of tea-growing regions of China) that tea might be successfully grown under the conditions in Assam and similar districts of India. When the other members of the expedition returned Griffith was detained in Assam, where he remained during the whole of 1836, making a successful expedition into the Mishmee mountains only once before visited by a European.
Early in 1837 Griffith, accompanied by only one servant, set off on an exploring expedition through the very disturbed country of Burmah towards Rangoon. All news of him ceased, or rather his assassination was credited by the Government and reported in the newspapers, when in June he re-appeared, ragged and travel stained, in Calcutta. He had explored down the Hookhoom (Hokong) Valley and on to Ava, and had then proceeded more rapidly by river to Rangoon, conveying his collections with danger and difficulty.
Appointed Surgeon to the embassy about to start for Bhutan, he filled up the intervening two months by again going to the Khasi hills to collect. He then accompanied the expedition to Bhutan, traversing over four hundred miles of the country and returning to Calcutta in June 1838. Here he spent the next few months arranging his collections and also studying the plants of the suburbs.
In November he joined the army of the Indus and accompanied it in its whole march. He remained another year in Afghanistan making various expeditions in the country and into the Hindoo Koosh. He returned, after visiting Simla and the Nerbudda, to Calcutta in the middle of 1841.
Griffith then proceeded to Malacca where he had been appointed Civil Assistant-Surgeon. He remained only a year, but long enough to appreciate the great interest of the district for his botanical work and to complete some important observations. He collected the plants of the province and also visited Mount Ophir.
Recalled to Calcutta, he took charge of the Botanic Gardens and also lectured to the medical students during Wallich's absence from August 1842 to August 1844, pressing forward reforms in the gardens and using his opportunity for scientific observation. On Wallich's return Griffith remained for some months longer in Calcutta continuing his work, married in September, and returned to Malacca in December full of hopeful plans for scientific work there. He had barely arrived at Malacca and begun work than he was seized with a fatal illness and died on February 9, 1845.