On 16 July 1795 Herbert matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, but soon migrated to Exeter College, where he graduated B.A.
Helga, a poem in seven cantos, came out in 1815, with a second edition in the following year; then Hedin, or the Spectre of the Tomb, a tale in verse from Danish history.
London, 1820; Pia della Pietra, 1820; Iris, a Latin ode, York, 1820; and the Wizard Wanderer of Jutland in 1820–1.
A History of the Species of Crocus was reprinted separately from that journal, edited by John Lindley in 1847, just after his death.
He edited Musae Etonensis (1795) while still at school and, on quitting Eton, obtained a prize for a Latin poem on the subject Rhenus, which was published.
[2] The International Bulb Society awards The Herbert Medal to persons making meritorious achievement in advancing the knowledge of bulbous plants.
...The elder De Candolle and Lyell have largely and philosophically shown that all organic beings are exposed to severe competition.
In regard to plants, no one has treated this subject with more spirit and ability than W. Herbert, Dean of Manchester, evidently the result of his great horticultural knowledge.
[4] Andrew Dickson White wrote in A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896): About 1820 Dean Herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his conviction that species are but fixed varieties.
According to Zirkle "he approached very closely to the natural selection hypothesis when he suggested that winter hardiness might become established in a hybrid stock through the survival of chance variations.