84 THE FIRST RUSSIAN BOTANIST. 



"By a certain unique and liappy accident it has come about 

 that the memory of the elder John Tradescant's having reached the 

 original i^ort of Archangel in 1618, and of his botanical examination 

 of that region, then first made, has been preserved. The only 

 printed record of this journey of Tradescant's is in a certain work 

 of Parkinson's, published in 1629." 



Kuprecht then refers to the above-quoted passage from the 

 Paradisus, and continues : — 



"But, the study of botanical history being at the present day 

 almost extinct, the passage quoted, in a very rare book, until very 

 lately scarcely to be found in a single Eussian library, attracted no 

 one's attention. These facts and an anonymous itinerary in 

 Tradescant's handwriting having now been brought to light at 

 Oxford in the Ashmolean (or more justly Tradescantian) Museum 

 by the skill of Dr. Hamel, readers are referred for a full account to 

 his memoir {liecueii des Acles Acad. Petersh., Dec. 1845). From this 

 I will only cull the facts that Tradescant recorded Rabiis Chamm- 

 morus, Corniis suecica, Veratrum Lobelianum (with a note almost 

 verbatim as in Parkinson), some fourth species of Conifer, and 

 Eosa moscovita [jSIus. Tradesc. p. 162) so common that an island 

 near the port had received its name among English traders from it. 

 This Eose Island, the name of which has now entirely faded from 

 the memory of the inhabitants, situated, as it was, opposite the 

 monastery of St. Nicholas, is important because our knowledge of 

 the wild roses of the district is not sufficiently full for us to say 

 with certainty whether this old record refers to Flosa cinnamomea , to 

 a new species which might most fitly bear Tradescant's name, or to 

 B. aciadaris Fl. Samoj., which is very different (in its denser 

 prickles, stipules, and bracts, for instance) from the Siberian form 

 and from Lindley's tab. 8. The Muscovia Briar, Rosa (tertia 

 silvestris) Russica, of W. Salmon's Eiirfl. Herb. 1711, chap. 602, pp. 

 962, 963, seems distinct from Tradescant's. J. Tradescant the 

 elder, the first founder of a museum of natural history in England, 

 a painstaking observer, and, if we except Poland, by far the earliest 

 investigator of plants in Eussia (being earlier than Kaempfer), 

 lived before Morison, Eay, Plukenet, and Petiver, and could have 

 derived little from any one except Turner and Gerard. Being little 

 skilled in Latin, he had hardly consulted the works of Lobel or 

 Clusius. This ought in fairness to be borne in mind in criticising 

 his itinerary, which was only written currente calamo for his own 

 use." 



Dr. Joseph von Hamel was an academician and privy councillor 

 of St. Petersburg, who accompanied Alexander I. to England in 

 1814, and was present at Oxford when the Tsar received the 

 honorary doctorate of the University. I have not discovered how 

 long he remained in England ; but he studied at the British 

 Museum as well as at the Bodleian, and must have been acquainted 

 with Parkinson's reference to Tradescant and Veratrum album before 

 he overhauled the Ashmolean MSS. It is true that his memoir 

 was not laid before the St. Petersburg Academy for thirty years ; 

 but, when it was completed, it was certainly a most remarkable 



