48 Prof. E. B. Poulton— The Collections 



fellow-men, for consolation or, at any rate, oblivion. Natural 

 history pursued in this spirit, especially when habits become 

 fixed and deepened with advancing age, is only too likely to 

 lead to the non-productive life of the recluse, poring for long 

 years over his collections, jealously guarding them from the 

 sight of others, and yet giving no account of them to the 

 world. 



We now enter on the next great period of his life, the five 

 years (1810-1815) of splendid work in South Africa. The 

 first part of his travels, discoveries, and observations are 

 described in the classical ' Southern Africa ' (vol. i. London, 

 1822, vol. ii. 1824), covering the period between his landing 

 at Cape Town on Nov. 26, 1810, and his departure from 

 Litakun on Aug. 3, 1812. The work contains a large and 

 excellent map, showing the whole of his route. He had 

 intended to follow up these volumes by a complete account 

 of the whole journey, but this was never accomplished, and 

 the manuscript of his journal and other materials from which 

 it might be written have not yet been found. The fine 

 collection of insects which he made in St. Helena and South 

 Africa was almost destroyed by neglect, probably during his 

 absence in Brazil (1825-30), but hundreds of species can be 

 named from the fragments preserved in the Oxford Museum. 

 The botanical collections, now at Kew, did not suffer in the 

 same way, and arc in excellent condition. 



Burchell remained in England during the ten years which 

 intervened between his South-African and Brazilian journeys. 

 He sowed in his garden at Fulham hundreds of South- 

 African seeds and some from St. Helena, keeping a careful 

 record, now preserved at Kew, of the dates at which they 

 came up. On Sept. 30th, 1817, he presented forty-three 

 skins of South-African quadrupeds to the British Museum, 

 and the neglect of these specimens, many of them unique, 

 was the cause of his quarrel with that Institution (' Southern 

 Africa,' vol. i. p. 383 &c., vol. ii. p. 336 &c). 



A letter to Sir William Hooker, dated March 31, 1819, 

 shows the care he took to suggest appropriate names for the 

 new species which he had discovered : — " I should mention 

 that it was my practice when on my travels to give such 

 specific names to my plants as the view of them in their native 

 place of growth naturally suggested, without attending to 

 their being new or not, which 1 had not always on the spot 

 time to ascertain ; but my object in thus naming thein was 

 that on my return to England I should find all the new 

 species with more appropriate names than an inspection of 

 the dried specimens in the herbarium might probably suggest 



