26 PLANTS CULTIVATED BY coLLiNsoN. [January, 



appears to have been discovered near the north of England, and 

 sent by Mr. Knowlton to Mr. Collinson in 1736. 



Syringa vulgaris, Common Lilac. — " Mem. Lord Petre was 

 particularly fond of white Lilac, and his gardener sowed seeds 

 gathered from the white-flowered variety of the shrub. He 

 raised above five thousand plants that flowered in 1741 ; and of 

 that number about twenty became white, the rest all blue" 

 (Hort. 54). 



It is inferred from the contents of this Catalogue, and from 

 the ' Hortus Kewensis,' etc., that Mr. Peter Collinson contri- 

 buted more trees, shrubs, and garden plants, to the stock pre- 

 viously in Britain, than any one botanist of the last century — 

 more than all the botanists together? Commercial botanists 

 (nurserymen) were neither so numerous nor so prosperous as 

 they are at the present day, and the public botanic gardens have 

 at no period added much to the fittings of parks, plantations, 

 pleasure-grounds, and gardens. Private enterprise has made 

 large additions to our stock of ornamental and useful plants. 

 Dr. Pulteney, who passes a high encomium on Mr. Collinson as 

 a benevolent and virtuous man, adds, — " In his time England 

 received large accessions to exotic botany from all parts of the 

 globe, to which no one contributed more than himself. Mr. 

 Collinson died August 11, 1768, in the seventy-fifth year of his 

 age" (Sketches of Botany in England, vol. ii. 275). There are 

 further particulars of this worthy man and member of the bo- 

 tanical brotherhood, in the ' Biographia Britannica,^ vol. iv. ed. 2, 

 p. 34. In Dr. Lettsom^s ' Memoirs of Dr. Fothergill,' there is 

 a list of Mr. Collinson's papers printed in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions ' and in the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' 



In April, 1861, the writer of this notice of the catalogue of 

 Mr. Collinson's plants, went to Mill Hill, not so much with the 

 hope of gleaning any anecdotes among the residents of that re- 

 tired hamlet in reference to so distinguished a resident, but 

 rather to ascertain whether all memorials of him had perished in 

 the place which he had rendered famous. The following has 

 been obtained from an old correspondent : — " I remember that 

 in 1831 I saw Mr. Collinson's gardener, then a very old man, 

 for his master had been dead, at that period, upwards of sixty 

 years. This man's descendants are still in Mill Hill, and carry 

 on the nursery trade of their father and grandfather. The latter 



