^. 



v- ' . 



Ti 



. F" 



EARLY CAPE BOTAXIRTS AND COLLECTORR. 



31 



■ 



one who had seen the plants growing. Stapel, as he says, had seen nothing 

 Imt the figures^ as it doos not appear tliat Heurniuf? brought home any 

 specimens. Spreng(d adopts his name for what was nntil then ''planta sine 

 nomine" — '''Hane placet Verbenam layiuglnnsum 7n<:?imm vocai-e qua3 his verbis 

 ab Heurnio descrlbltur" (^Alanulea ruhra^ L.)* It seems hardly necessary 

 to explain that ^^ Indica " does not necessarily imjily that, a plant came from 

 what we now^ mean by Tndia^ as indoinl tlie Manulea could not have done : 



tl 



le 



plant 



s 



fifjnred 



by ITcurnius (wliicli include a Jlconanthus and two 



Oxalises) are nil from the C*ape, as indited often appears in their names. 

 Thus Stapelm varieaata is described as "Fritillaria crassa promonforii bona} 

 i '* — a name which Jacquin (following Hermann, ^ Cat. Hort. Lngd. Bat.' 



specimen cultivated in the 



spe 



54: 1G87), wdio o-ives a o;ood fioMire from a 



Garden, calls " inpptum/^ thoii^b the reference is evidently fo the flower 



^' intus fundus luteus TTiacuHs fnscis undique conspergitur/' which suggested 



a comparison with Fntillarhi ]\feJeayris. 



Altliough be was not the tirst to observe the plants of the Cape, it is to 



Paul Hermann (lG.tO-l()98) that we owe our earliest collection of 

 specimens thence. It is common knowdedge that among tlie chief treasures 

 of the Department of Botany is tlie Hei'barinm !i]>on wliicii Linmeus based 

 his "^ Flora Zeylanica ' (1748), and of wliich lus gives some account in his 

 preface to that work (p. 17). Its history and relation to the Flora are set 

 forth bv Trimen witli ch;iracteristic care in this Society's Journal 

 (Botanv), xxiv, 1213-155, but it may be worth while to transcribe textually 

 the manuscript account prefixed by Dryander to the first volume, as this is 

 only summarized by Trimen. The account runs : 



^' This is the Herbarium of Paulus HermannuSj Professor of Botany at 

 Leyden. The plants contained In the three first volumes were collected 

 by him in Ceylon^ and those in the fourth volunie partly at Ceylon and 

 partly at the Cape of (iood Hope, Hermann's Museum Zoylanicum is 

 the catalogue of this collection. Augustus Giinther, Apothecary at 

 Copenhagen, sent it 1745 to Liniuvas, who from this Herbarium 

 composed his Flora Zeylanica ; see his preface to this book. 



'' Giinther either gave it or sold it to C-ount Adam Grottlob Moltke ; 

 see a memoir of Professor HottbuU i det Kubenllu^■nske Selskabs Skrifter^ 



10 Deel, page 417, 



** After the death of Count Moltke, his library, including this herbarium, 

 was bouo^ht by Professor Treschow of Copenhagen, ^^ ho sohl the latter to 



-' 93 



Sir Joseph Banks for £75. 



The purchase by Baidvs was completed in 1703^ as appears from two 



letters of Banks to Treschow (dated June 14 and July G of that year) in the 



transcript of the Banksian correspondence preserved in the Department. 



It mav be added to Dryander's account that, after the publication of the 



