122 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
was first opened to foreign travellers, Mr Fortune, then 
collecting plants on his own account, was the means of 
introducing some of the finest Japanese trees and shrubs that 
are now such favourites with the decorative planter; the hardy 
Conifers again forming a leading feature in his introductions. 
Among them were the Japanese Cypresses, Retinospora obtusa, 
R. pisifera, and numerous fine varieties of them; Zhwiopsis 
dolobrata variegata, and the curious Umbrella Pine, Sciadopitys 
verticillata. He was also the introducer of many free and showy 
flowering plants and shrubs from both China and Japan, but 
they belong more to the garden than the forest, and need not be 
specified here. 
Among plant-collectors, William Lobb, a Cornishman, will 
ever occupy a high niche as the introducer to Britain of the 
Mammoth Tree of California, Wellingtonia gigantea. He first 
went out to South America in 1840 as plant-collector for Mr 
Veitch, nurseryman, Exeter, and sent home many valuable 
tropical plants from Brazil and the adjacent countries. After- 
wards crossing the continent from east to west, he visited the 
great forests of the Chilian Pine, Araucaria imbricata, in 
Southern Chili, and collected a large quantity of its seeds, 
which he brought home in 1844, and thoroughly established the 
tree in Britain. It had been introduced fifty years before by 
Archibald Menzies, but was still rare. Trees raised from Lobb’s 
seed are to be found in every part of the United Kingdom, the 
most of the largest specimens originating in that importation. 
Visiting South Chili again for Mr Veitch in 1847 to 1849, he 
introduced from that country and Northern Patagonia, in 1848, 
such fine shrubs as Hscallonia macrantha, Desfontainea spinosa, 
Berberis Darwiniti, Philesia buxifolia, and the beautiful climber, 
Lapageria rosea; as well as, in 1849, such interesting Conifers 
as Mtzroya patagonica, Libocedrus tetragona, Podocarpus 
nubigenus, and Prince Albert’s Yew, Saaxe-Gothea conspicua. 
Proceeding to California in 1849, Lobb sent home to Mr Veitch 
large consignments of cones and seeds of many of the discoveries 
of Douglas, Hartweg, and others who had explored the country 
before him, and the plants raised from those seeds made some 
of the scarce species common and popular. In a country so 
often and so closely traversed by keen-eyed collectors, Lobb’s 
original discoveries were not numerous; but his introduction of 
the Wellingtonia to Britain in December 1853, from the Calaveras 
