46 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



whereof tlie sides were soon clothed with a luxuriant growth of 

 alpiiies and otlier flowering herbs. Nor was this all. Mitford, 

 whose sojourn in Japan had impressed him with the decorative 

 qualities of bamboos, became a pioneer in the cultivation of these 

 giant couch-grasses in this country, and soon had more than forty 

 species thriving in his woods. His love for this class of plant, 

 previouslv seldom to be seen in English pleasure-grounds, bore 

 valuable Iruit in the form of a book entitled ' The Bamboo Garden,' 

 published in 1896. In preparing this, his only permanent 

 contribution to scientific literature, Mitford was in constant com- 

 munication with those enterprising collectors, Messrs. Yeitch, 

 M. Latour-Marliac, and the brothers Villa of Genoa ; and he was 

 assisted in the classification of species, hitherto very imperfectly 

 understood, by Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir William Thiselton- 

 Dver. The book found many readers, for it combined sound 

 botanical and cultui"al information with an agreeable literary style, 

 which also distinguished those narratives of travel aud remini- 

 scence which came from the same hand. 



Mitford entered Parliament as Conservative member for the 

 Stratford Division of Warwickshire in 1892, but he declined to seek 

 re-election after tiie dissolution in 1895 on account of increasing 

 deafness, which proved a sad drawback in intercourse with his 

 numerous friends during the later years of his life. In 1902 he 

 was raised to the peerage in the title of Baron Eedesdale of 

 Eedesdale, in Northumberland. He accompanied Prince Arthur 

 of Connaught on the Garter Mission to Japan in 1906, being thus 

 one of the veiy few well-educated EngHshmen who could speak 

 and write from experience of the sweeping changes effected in 

 that country by the revolution of 1868. 



Lord Eedesdale married in 187-1: Lady Clementine Ogilvy, 

 daughter of the seventh Earl of Airlie, by whom he had five sons 

 and four daughters. His eldest sou, Major the Hon. Clement 

 Freeman Mitford, D.S.O., lOtli Hussars, was severely wounded in 

 the South African War, and was killed in action in May, 1915; 

 and the second son, the Hon. David Freeman Mitford, now on 

 active service in France, was also seriously wounded in South 

 Africa. 



It will be apparent from this brief outline of Lord Eedesdale's 

 career that professional and official duties left him no leisure to 

 apply to scientific study until he had passed the meridian of life. 

 But Sir Joseph Hooker, in dedicating to Lord Eedesdale 

 volume cxxiii. of the ' Botanical Magazine,' bore testimony to the 

 good service rendered to science by him, " giving me as it does the 

 opportunity of recalling the years of our cordial official co- 

 operation, when the Royal Gardens profited so greatly in every 

 department through your energy, foresight, and love of plants. 

 To this claim I must surely add the service you have rendered 

 to horticulture and botany by your labours in introducing, culti- 

 vating and studying the hardy bamboos."' [Heebeet Maxwell.] 



