INTEODUCTION 



THE following pages contain a record of continuous work for 

 over three-quarters of a century in the field of Horticulture 

 by one family, work which justly may be claimed to have 

 permanently benefited every garden. 



The good fortune to usually find the right assistants for 

 both home and foreign service, and the signal loyalty and 

 capability of those selected, largely contributed to success, and 

 the names of several are well known to all with any knowledge 

 of plants. 



To the representatives seeking unknown plants at one 

 period or another in almost every clime, fortune has not 

 invariably been kind, but the work of such men as Thomas 

 Lobb, William Lobb, the late John Gould Veitch, Charles 

 Maries and E. H. Wilson, has been a gain in every way ; 

 whilst the efforts in hybridizing and selecting of John Dominy, 

 John Seden, V.M.H., and John Heal, V.M.H., have given a 

 wider interest to all cultivators. 



It would be strange if results were not forthcoming when 

 such practically virgin lands as California, certain parts of 

 South America, Japan and Central China were offered to 

 men of the calibre of the Lobbs in the early forties of the last 

 century, the late John Gould Veitch in the early sixties, and 

 Wilson but recently ; or when such hybridists as those named 

 devoted their life efforts to the improvement of many now 

 well-known garden plants. 



It is difficult to realize the gardens of this and other 



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