^TTi- 



. r 



L_ J 



KARLY C4PE BOTANISTS AND COLLECTORS. 



45 



Capensis,'' which appears to he a transcrlj)t of an earlier and unpuhlished 

 version hj Tliiinher<r of his Frodwmits. Of this transcript we have also a 

 copy hy Sij^ismund Bacstrom, in which Dryander's nutes are incorporated 

 and wliich also contains notes hy Salishury. Tlie liistory of these volumes 

 cannot he traced ; neitlier appears in Dryander's Catalogue of the Eanksian 

 lihrary. There are also in the Solandcr MSS. numerous descriptions tran- 

 scribed hy Bacstrom, who was employed l)y Banks in his herharium and was 

 to have accompanied him had he o-ono on Cook's Second Voyage. 



Dr. E. D. Clarke in the account of his travels in Scandinavia (Travels, 

 part 3 sect. 2 = vol. vi, 175, 1823) gives a rather pathetic account of his 

 visit to Thunber^ at Lpsahi in Novemher, 1 799. He found " the successor 

 of Linntcus in the Botanical chair" delivering a lecture " in the old Botanic 



he 



wnore 



Li 



mnreus once 



Garden, opposite the identical house, or cottage, 

 resided." The subject was the '"snpcrha Falmaimm familia' of Linnfieus-" : 

 "what was our surprise to find the Professor with only half-a-dozen slovenly 

 bovs standing around him as his audience — the eldest of whom could not be 



whose whole interest in tlie lecture seemed 



more than fourteen years of age, 



to consist in watching for the moment when a palm-branch was cast among 



them hy the Professor, for which tliey scrambled ; being eager to cut these 



branches with their knives, for the purpose of making them serve as 



walkiniT-staves.^' 



(1774?-1825) 



gardener to George Hibbert, for whom 



he collected at the Cape (1798-1803) and subsetiuently for James Lee and 

 others. He made large collections of living and dried plants, especially 



of Ericaceic, on w 



hich 



a 



MS. in his hand is in the Kew Herbarium. 



Brown in his treatise on the Protoacete (Trans, Linn. Soc. x.) dedicated to him 

 the o-enus Mvenia, and acknowledged Hibhert's permission to examine " the 

 valuable herbarium of native specimens " collected by Niven, "and even to 

 dissect such as were now." Salisbury (Trans. Hort. Soc. i. 2C4) refers to the 

 " useful knowledge relative to the soil and places of growth " of Cape plants 

 which he derived tVom Niven's manuscript tickets. 



( 



(1 



1810) pub. 



lished in 1789 'A Narrative of Four Journeys into the Country of the 

 Hottentots and Caffraria' in 1777-9, which abounds in references to plants : 

 it would seem, indeed, that the journeys were mainly undertaken with a view 

 to observing and collecting them. Thunberg (Fl. Cap. x.) writes : " Paterson, 

 AVilhslm, Anglus, circa 1773 per aliquod tempus, sub sua commoratione, 

 lono-inquiora suscepit itinera^ variaque nova et valde curiosa in patriam suani 

 transmisit," It seems almost certain that he must have had a collection of 



dried plants, apart from any that he may have sent to England, but of this 

 I can find no trace. He is occasionally mentioned in connection with living 

 plants in the ' Hortus Kewensis '— e. g. ^fese>nhrl/ant/,tlm compadum (ii. 191), 



