58 THE JOTJENAL OF BOTAKT 



aid of sea-captains and travellers, and by the emplojanent of collectors, 

 among whom were Archibald Menzies, then a yonng man of twenty- 

 one, William Brass, Henry Smeathman, and vaiious Americans, 

 including the Bartrams and Humphry Marshall. The garden was 

 especially rich in North American plants ; a letter from Fothergill to 

 the last-named (quoted on p. 194) gives some account of these: "it 

 is acknowledged by our ablest botanists that there is not a richer bit 

 of ground, in curious American plants, in Great Britain." 



The history of some of the more interesting plants is given in 

 detail (pp. 195-197) — e. g. the Tea-plant, Ginseng, Illicium Jlori- 

 danum, and Arbutus Andrachne. The last, as Dr. Fox states, was 

 the subject of a paper by Ehret in Phil. Trans. Ivii. 124 (1767) ; 

 this is accompanied by an excellent plate, the sketch for which is 

 among the large collection of Ehret's drawings in the Department of 

 Botany (no. 93 a). The tree was grown from seeds sent to Fother- 

 gill from Aleppo by Alexander Russell in 1754, who also forwarded 

 a sjDecimen of which Ehret made the drawing (no. 93 h), Avhence 

 the dissections on the published plate were taken. Curiously enough, 

 the Arbutus does not appear in the list of plants in Russell's Natural 

 History of Aleppo, nor is there a specimen from him in the National 

 Herbarium, which contains so many of his ])lants. 



Among the trees wdiich still remain from Fothergill's time. Dr. Fox 

 mentions (p. 200) "an ancient JEuonymus'''' — this we understand is 

 really Rhamnus catliarticus : one or two slips on this and the 

 following page — e. g. " gingko " and cyrenaica (for 'pyrenaica^ 

 suggest that Dr. Fox is not altogether familiar with botany — an 

 impression confirmed by the note (p. 191) that Lantana JBartraniii 

 Baldwin is " akin to Viburnum " a mistake doubtless arising from 

 the name Viburnum Lantana. If this be so, great credit is due to 

 the author for the general accuracy of his botanical references. The 

 Bartram commemorated by Baldwin (cfr. HeliquicB JBaldiviniance, 

 p. 24) was, as its author expressly states, John — not William, as 

 suggested by Dr. Fox, — and the same correction applies to Salisbury's 

 genus Bartramia, referred to in the same note. It may be said here 

 that mistakes of any kind are astonishingly few and those of but 

 little importance : for example, Fothergill's house (16 Harpur Street, 

 W.C.) is not " now " — and indeed never was — " occupied by a Bene- 

 dictine brotherhood," although Abbot (now Cardinal) Gasquet and 

 another monk lived there before the departure of the former for 

 Rome. 



Among the Friends — in both senses of the word— due prominence 

 is given to Peter Collinson (1694-1768) to whom frequent reference 

 has been made in these pages, and to John Bartram (1699-1777) ; 

 the chapter devoted to these two men, of whose activities an admirable 

 summary is given, is among the most interesting in the book. We 

 gather from the two last of the seven letters from Bartram to 

 Fothergill (1769-71) preserved in the Botanical Department — these 

 have not been printed, but will appear in the w^ork on Bartram that 

 we are expecting from Miss Carlotta Herring-Browne — that the rela- 

 tions between them may have become strained: in the last (May 19, 

 1771) Bartram complains of Fothergill's silence, to which he had 



