It has been necessary to consider in some detail the rapid movements of Griffith's life in the East in order to fully appreciate the difficulties under which his large amount of scientific work was accomplished. The twelve years of his official life were filled with professional duties, difficult and dangerous exploration, management of the Botanic Gardens, and the labours entailed in making and caring for extensive collections. It would not have been surprising had Griffith, in spite of his attainments, contributed nothing to scientific botany beyond rendering these collections available for other workers. He estimated his collection of plants at more than twelve thousand species; and on his travels he did not neglect other collections of interest. Insects obtained by him are described, he collected the birds and fish in every district he visited; indeed he was a keen fisherman and must have thrown a fly in many a stream that had not been fished before, combining sport and science.
Griffith's collections were made with the definite purpose of enabling him, when he had leisure, to produce a general account of the Indian flora on a geographical basis. His methods of collecting were most enlightened and subserved his work as a morphologist and a student of the conditions of occurrence of the plants, not merely of formal systematic botany. The journals he kept on all expeditions are full of references to the occurrence of the plants met with. He often adopted a plan of roughly mapping each day's route and indicating the plants and associations of plants, along the line of march. I wonder if modern ecologists know of these records made long before ecology was invented?
Whenever possible he seems to have examined the morphology of the living plants, and he fully realised the value of preserving portions of the plants in spirit for future examination instead of relying on herbarium material.
This quotation from a letter to Wight (then Superintending Surgeon of the Madras Service), with whom Griffith kept up a most interesting and friendly correspondence, from which I should like to quote largely, may give an idea of his point of view and also show how he looked forward to returning to Malacca:—
"If ever you go to the place of Podostemon endeavour to get some germinating or at least very young plants. I can fancy how an Acotyledonous plant gets a stem but how a Dicotyledonous plant loses it, and becomes as some of them do, mere discs spread over rocks is another thing. Then again where are their roots? How opposed to late ideas of the absolute distinction of the three great divisions. Also please to take a bottle of spirits, and deposit specimens in it. I shall not be very sorry to get back to Malacca, this is a delightful place truly, but one is interrupted, and the lectures at the Medical College consume much time. For botany no place can exceed Malacca."
And again,
"What a business it will be to settle the types of the families from which the names must eventually be taken; this will never be done by dried-plant botanists; but by examination of development, which I am convinced will alone give the key."
As to Griffith's methods of work, we learn from a memorial notice of him by Mr M'Clelland that whenever possible after the business of the morning was finished the rest of the day was devoted "to the examination and dissection of plants under the microscope, drawing and describing all peculiarities presented." "Even on his death-bed his microscope stood beside him with the unfinished drawings and papers and dissections of plants on which he was engaged the day on which the fatal symptoms of his disorder came on."
All his work shows the same characters of direct individual observation and interpretation of the facts before him, repeated examination of the same point, and almost a prodigality of labour in recording his observations in drawings. At first under the influence of Robert Brown, he used the simple microscope with triplet lenses, but later he employed the compound microscope and in the year before his death writes hopefully of ordering a first-rate microscope when he obtains the arrears due to him from the Directors.
Griffith's high attainments were appreciated by the distinguished circle of English botanists of his time with whom he corresponded. Mr Solby, to whom he always sent home his papers for submission to the Linnean Society; Robert Brown, to whose work he constantly recurs with admiration, and whose judgment he trusted absolutely; Lindley; Sir William Hooker, who looked forward to his being settled permanently in charge of the Calcutta gardens, and Dr Wight may be named.