33 



THE FIEST EUSSIAN BOTANIST. 



By G. S. Boulger, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



It is not perhaps generally known that the first botanist to 

 visit any part of Eussia, except Poland, was, if not an Englishman, 

 English at least by adoption — that he was none other than the 

 elder of the two well-known John Tradescants. It is true that this 

 fact was published nearly fifty years ago in the Proceedings of the 

 Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, and was made 

 known to English readers in a volume published in London in 

 1854 ; but a paper in German in a Eussian publication is apt to 

 escape attention here, and Mr. John Studdy Leigh's translation of 

 Dr. J. Hamel's work, under the title of England and Ruftsia, bears 

 no external suggestion of botanical interest, and is now, moreover, 

 out of print. 



It is true also that the fact of John Tradescant's having been at 

 some time in Eussia is plainly implied in the following important 

 passage in Parkinson's Paradisus Terrestris (1629), p. 346 : — 



"Elhborus albus vulgaris. "White Ellebor or Neesing roote .... 

 in some parts of Eussia, in that aboundance, by the relation of that 

 worthy, curious, and diligent searcher and preseruer of all natures 

 rarities and varieties, my very good friend, lohn Tradescante, often 

 heretofore remembred, that as hee said, a good ship might be 

 loaden with the rootes hereof, which hee saw in an Island there." 



This passage is reproduced almost verbatim in the Theatnim 

 Botanicum (1640), p. 218, and these references did not escape the 

 vigilance of Pulteney, who writes of Tradescant : — "He travelled 

 several years, and into various parts of Europe; as far eastward as 

 into Eussia' (Sketches of the Progress of Botany, i. 176). 



In his copy of Pulteney, now in my possession, the Eev. W. W. 

 Newbould has added a note: — "For what is known about the three 

 Tradescants consult Hamel (Joseph von) England and Eussia, com- 

 prising the Voyages of J. Tradescant the elder." I never did so, 

 however, until my return from my recent visit to Eussia. Before 

 starting, and whilst on the voyage, I read with care the Eev. 

 Alexander A. Boddy's volume, With Bussian Pilgrims (London, n.d.), 

 which, though not written either for botanists or by a botanist, 

 quotes freely from Dr. Hamel's work, or rather from the English 

 translation of it, and refers to Tradescant's voyage as a well-known 

 fact. On my return, Mr. E. G. Baker called my attention to 

 Kuprecht's Symbolte Plantarum Bossicarum, reprinted at St. Peters- 

 burg in 1846 from the Beitriige zur Pjlanzenkunde des Biissischen 

 Belches, issued by the Imperial Academy in 1844, but with new 

 pagination and a postscript. This valuable little work of Euprecht's, 

 I may remark in passing, contains a paper, ' Flores Samojedorum 

 cisuralensium,' enumerating the plants found near Archangel and 

 those found by him in his journey in 1841 on the island of Kolguev 

 and the adjacent regions, including descriptions of several new 

 species. Of the postscript (pp. 221-2), which with the rest of the book 

 is in Latin, I may as well perhaps give a summarised translation: — 

 Journal of Botany. — Vol. 32. [Feb. 1895.] d 



