xl PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



vice." On the death of his father, in 1814, Mr. Don, in conjunc- 

 tion with his younger brother, David, made an attempt to carry- 

 on the nursery which their father had established at Forfar ; but 

 the business was shortly after given up, the elder brother removing 

 in 1815 to Edinburgh, where he was for a time employed in the 

 establishment of Messrs. Dickson and Co. In the following year 

 he came to London, and after a short engagement at the Portman 

 Nursery, succeeded in obtaining employment at the Chelsea Bo- 

 tanic Garden, then under the charge of Mr. Anderson, with whom 

 he remained as foreman till 1821, when he entered the service of 

 the Horticultural Society, and was shortly after despatched as their 

 collector to Tropical Africa, South America, &c. During this 

 voyage, which occupied something more than a year (from Decem- 

 ber 1821 tni February 1823), he visited Madeira, Sierra Leone, 

 St, Thomas's, Bahia, St. Salvador, Maranham, Trinidad, Jamaica, 

 Havana, &c., and his activity in collecting and sending home 

 living plants, seeds, and dried specimens, obtained for him the 

 highest encomiums of the then Secretary of the Horticultviral 

 Society, Mr. Sabine. Many of these plants afterwards flowered at 

 Chisvsdck, and were described by Professor Liiidley in the Horticul- 

 tural Transactions, &c. Mr. Don's attention having been parti- 

 cularly directed to the introduction of tropical fruits and the pro- 

 curing of accurate information respecting them, and his visit to 

 Sierra Leone occurring at a time when many of its fruits (then 

 chiefly knovni from Dr. Afzelius's Eeport to the African Society) 

 were in perfection, he was enabled to collect materials for a very 

 interesting account of them, which appeared in the 5th volume of 

 the Horticultural Society's ' Transactions,' under the title " Some 

 Accounts of the Edible Fruits of Sierra Leone, drawn up by 

 Joseph Sabine, Esq., Secretary, from the Journal and personal 

 communication of Mr. George Don, A.L.S." At the recent 

 sale of the Herbarium of the Horticultural Society, specimens of 

 the plants obtained by Mr. Don during this expedition, and which 

 are valuable, not merely in connexion with his own botanical 

 labours, but likewise as being, in part, typical of the species 

 described by Messrs. Bentham, Hooker, &c., in the ' Flora Nigri- 

 tiana,' were purchased for the Herbarium of the British Museum. 

 His brother David having succeeded INir. Brovm, on his resigna- 

 tion in 1822, as Librarian to the Linnean Society, George was for 

 some years domiciled with him. During the earlier part of that 

 period, he appears to have been occupied upon a revision of the 

 genus Combrrfum, which was read befoi'e the Linnean Society in 



