168 QUESTIONABLE USAGE. 



to wait at the Brazils till his ship could be refitted, 

 he reached Cadiz on the 22d February 1785 ; " but 

 instead (says his biographer) of the reception he 

 expected and deserved from the nation he had 

 chiefly benefited, every Spaniard, from the sub- 

 alterns of the customhouse to the ministers of 

 state, seemed leagued to mortify him and to render 

 his labours useless. His collections were exposed 

 to the rude and useless scrutiny of the barbarians 

 at the customhouse, so as to be rendered useless, 

 in a great measure, even to those who meant to 

 plunder them. The whole were thrown afterwards 

 into damp warehouses, where they lay for the plants 

 t( rot, and the inestimable collections of seeds to 

 lose their powers of vegetation, till certain forms 

 of the grave and sapient most Catholic Church 

 were gone through. He could never obtain that 

 the seeds should be committed to the earth so as 

 to be of use, and hence the gardens of Europe were 

 never enriched with more than some half score of 

 his botanical discoveries, among which were the 

 magnificent Datura arborea, the beautiful Salvia 

 formosa, and the fragrant Verbena triphylla ; this 

 last will be a ' monumentum cere perennius ' with 

 those who shall ever know his history."* 



Disappointed and foiled, Dombey was compelled 

 to remain at Cadiz without friends, whose sympathy 



See art. "Dombey" in "Rees* Cycloptedia," by Sir J.E. Smith. 



