botanical collector, and he adopted the alternative, and visited 

 Java and the adjacent islands. 



By a second agreement Thomas Lobb agreed to go to India 

 to collect plants, seeds and other objects of Natural History 

 for three years, and left England for Calcutta on December 

 25th 1848. During the twenty years or upwards he travelled 

 for the Veitchian firm he visited the Khasia Hills, Assam, 

 and other parts of North-East India, and subsequently 

 Moulmein and parts of Lower Burmah, sending home from 

 those districts most of the finest Orchids found there, many 

 previously known to science, but introduced by him to 

 cultivation for the first time. 



Worthy of mention among these are Vanda ccerulea, 

 Coelogyne (Pleione) lagenaria, C. maculata, Aerides Fieldingi, 

 A. multiflorum Lobbii, A. m. Veitchii, Dendrobium infundi- 

 bulum, Calanthe (Limatodes) rosea, and Cypripedium villosum. 



Lobb afterwards visited the southern parts of the Malay 

 peninsula, North Borneo (Labuan and Sarawak) and other 

 Eastern Isles, when he discovered and introduced the ancestral 

 forms of the superb and useful race of Rhododendrons, 

 known in gardens as the Javanico-jasminiflorum hybrids ; 

 the original forms being Rhododendron javanicum, R. Lobbii, 

 R. jasminiflorum and R. Brookeanum. 



From this region, too, he successfully introduced some of 

 the first Nepenthes cultivated in British gardens, including 

 Nepenthes Rafflesiana, N. Veitchii, N. sanguinea, and 

 N. ampullaria ; and among the very many Orchids he sent 

 home were Vanda tricolor and its variety suavis, of which he 

 was also the discoverer ; Coelogyne speciosa, Calanthe vestita, 

 Cypripedium barbatum, and others. Lobb subsequently 

 went to the Philippine Islands, and collected the best Orchids 

 found in the neighbourhood of Manila, among the Phalsenopsis 



42 



