"The subject of this notice died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 29th of last May, aged Seventy-nine years. His name as a gardener, and particularly as a botanist, was known throughout Britain. Uneducated and self-taught botanist that he was, few men surpassed him as an authority on the general nomenclature of plants. The writer of this was an apprentice under him while gardener at Melville Castle, near Edinburgh, in 1842, and at that time the collection of hardy herbaceous plants under the charge of Mr. Sterling numbered over fifteen thousand species, and the collection of Cape Heaths and New Holland plants was probably unsurpassed by any private collection in the vicinity. George Sterling was a stern disciplinarian though one of the kindest of men, and the position of his workmen and apprentices was no sinecure. Nearly every plant of his large collection was distinctly labeled, and all too by his apprentices and workmen at night on their own time, often burning the midnight oil, for our own benefit, he said.

A list was given to each man weekly and a set task exacted from each.

"At that time, for a man in his station, Mr. Sterling received flattery enough to turn his head. Rarely a week passed but his interesting collection of plants was examined by amateur and professional botanists, and such men as Dr. Niel of Edinburgh, McNab of the Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, and Turnbull of Glasgow consulted and deferred to his opinion. Mr. Sterling was a candidate for Curator of the Cambridge Botanic Gardens, England, in 1864, and received scores of testimonials from the highest sources in Britain vouching for his peculiar ability for the position.

"The writer visited him in Edinburgh in 1872. He had then retired from active work, and though sixty-five years of age was as bright mentally and physically as a man of fifty. He still kept a collection of over six thousand species of plants, mostly Alpines, and amused himself by making exchanges with the different Botanical Gardens throughout Europe.

"Mr. Sterling had but one son, who I understand has inherited the botanical tastes of his father and who has been for some time in the United States, and is now of the firm of Gould & Sterling, nurserymen, Jacksonville, Fla. P. H".