HISTORICAL NOTES 9 



the Sandwich Islands when he fell into one of the pit-traps constructed 

 by the natives to catch wild bulls, in which an animal was already 

 entrapped. He was found terribly gored and mangled and quite dead 

 a few hours later. 



Hitherto the foreign hardy trees and shrubs introduced had been 

 almost wholly obtained from Europe and N. America. We have now 

 briefly to notice a man who devoted much of his life to the introduction 

 of plants from Japan. Philipp P. von Siebold (1796-1866) was born 

 at Wurzburg in Bavaria and went to Japan in 1823. In 1830 he returned 

 to Europe, and in collaboration with Zuccarini published his fine illus- 

 trated work, the Flora Japonica (1835-42). In 1850 he founded a nursery 

 at Leyden to which he successfully introduced many trees and shrubs from 

 Japan and China. After his death many of his original trees were secured 

 by the firm of Simon-Louis of Metz, in whose arboretum they may still 

 be seen. 



As regards Chinese plants, not much had yet been done. Some 

 plants had been introduced during the famous embassy of Lord 

 Macartney to the Chinese court in 1792-3, and a young man named 

 William Kerr had been sent out from Kew to China in 1803. He 

 introduced the double-flowered Kerriajaponica and the Chinese juniper, but 

 appears to have done little among hardy trees and shrubs. Soon, however, 

 the vast increase of shipping, and the greatly augmented intercourse between 

 various parts of the world, began to render the introduction of plants 

 easy by means of seeds sent by amateurs resident in foreign ports. 

 Especially was this the case when the disturbing and retrogressive influences 

 of the Napoleonic wars ceased with Waterloo. 



In N. America the work of the Erasers was carried on by John Lyon, 

 commemorated by the genus Lyonia, who filled in the period between 

 the Erasers and Douglas. Like the former, he worked chiefly on the 

 wonderful flora of the S.E. United States. He introduced many trees 

 and shrubs in large quantities (although not for the first time) between 

 1806 and 1818, and thus did much to add to the beauty and interest of 

 gardens. Many of the fine old N. American trees still adorning our 

 gardens were brought over by Lyon. He was of Scottish parentage, but 

 the place and date of his birth are not known, nor very certainly that of 

 his death. According to Nuttall, the botanist, he "fell a victim to a 

 dangerous epidemic amidst those savage and romantic mountains which 

 had so often been the scene of his labours." 



During the second and third decades of the nineteenth century a few 

 Himalayan trees and shrubs had been sent to England, chiefly by 

 Buchanan-Hamilton and Wallich, successive directors of the Botanic 

 Garden at Calcutta ; but the first genuine revelation of the riches of that 

 region was reserved for Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911). This 



