page_title: Allan Octavian Hume
section_title: South London Botanical Institute
hierarchical_section_title: Allan Octavian Hume / South London Botanical Institute
caption_attribution_description: Bookplate of Allan Octavian Hume (d. 1912) - motto - Industria et Perseverantia - from a book in the library of the South London Botanical Institute, London.
context_page_description: Allan Octavian Hume, CB ICS was a British member of the Imperial Civil Service, a political reformer, ornithologist and botanist who worked in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress. A notable ornithologist, Hume has been called "the Father of Indian Ornithology" and, by those who found him dogmatic, "the Pope of Indian ornithology".
  As an administrator of Etawah, he saw the Indian Rebellion of 1857 as a result of misgovernance and made great efforts to improve the lives of the common people. The district of Etawah was among the first to be returned to normality and over the next few years Hume's reforms led to the district being considered a model of development. Hume rose in the ranks of the Indian Civil Service but like his father Joseph Hume, the radical MP, he was bold and outspoken in questioning British policies in India. He rose in 1871 to the position of secretary to the Department of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce under Lord Mayo. His criticism of Lord Lytton however led to his removal from the Secretariat in 1879.
  He founded the journal Stray Feathers in which he and his subscribers recorded notes on birds from across India.
context_section_description: After the loss of his manuscript containing his lifetime of ornithological notes. Hume took up a great interest in horticulture while at Shimla. 
  ... He erected large conservatories in the grounds of Rothney Castle, filled them with the choicest flowers, and engaged English gardeners to help him in the work. From this, on returning to England, he went on to scientific botany. But this, as Kipling says, is another story, and must be left to another pen.
  Hume took an interest in wild plants and especially on invasive species although his botanical publishing was sparse with only a few short notes in 1901 on a variety of Scirpus maritimus and another on the flowering of Impatiens roylei. Hume contacted W.H. Griffin in 1901 to help develop a herbarium of botanical specimens. Hume would arrange his plants on herbarium sheets in artistic positions before pressing them. The two made many botanical trips including one to Down in Kent to seek some of the rare orchids that had been collected by Darwin. In 1910, Hume bought the premises of 323 Norwood Road, and modified it to have a herbarium and library. He called this establishment the South London Botanical Institute (SLBI) with the aim of "promoting, encouraging, and facilitating, amongst the residents of South London, the study of the science of botany."
  One of the aims of the institute was to help promote botany as a means for mental culture and relaxation, an idea that was not shared by Henry Groves, a trustee for the Institute. Hume objected to advertisement and refused to have any public ceremony to open the institute. The first curator was W.H. Griffin and Hume endowed the Institute with £10,000. Frederick Townsend, F.L.S., an eminent botanist, who died in 1905, had left instructions that his herbarium and collection was to be given to the institute, which was then only being contemplated. Hume left £15,000 in his will for the maintenance of the botanical institute.
  In the years leading up to the establishment of the Institute, Hume built up links with many of the leading botanists of his day. He worked with F. H. Davey and in the Flora of Cornwall (1909), Davey thanks Hume as his companion on excursions in Cornwall and Devon, and for help in the compilation of the 'Flora', publication of which was financed by Hume. The SLBI has since grown to hold a herbarium of approximately 100,000 specimens mostly of flowering plants from Europe including many collected by Hume. The collection was later augmented by the addition of other herbaria over the years, and has significant collections of Rubus (bramble) species and of the Shetland flora.
caption: Bookplate of Hume with the motto Industria et Perseverantia
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