14 THE USES OF PLANTS. 



the Beagle, brought back the well-known and orna- 

 mental Rerberis that bears his name. Allan Cunning- 

 ham had gone out to succeed his murdered brother 

 Richard at Sydney, where he, too, died in 1839. 

 John Gibson was collecting Dendrobiums in India a 

 collection which, with the subsequent labours of the 

 Messrs. Veitch, their hybridizer Dominy, and other 

 collectors, such as Low, Skinner, Rucker and Bate- 

 man, has combined to render the cultivation of these 

 beautiful exotics one of the most prominent features 

 of the gardening of our time. Within the next few 

 years John Miers was to return from Brazil with the 

 large collections which he spent so many years in 

 describing ; Dr. George Gardner was to leave the same 

 country with 7,000 specimens, and Hugh Cuming 

 was to return from the Philippine Islands with his 

 vast collection of 13,000. Loudon was but beginning 

 to issue those monuments of his industry, of which 

 the ' Arboretum Britannicum ' (1833-38) is, perhaps, 

 the best, and Lindley had his best work yet to do. 

 Giles Munby did not start for Algeria until 1839, nor 

 Robert Fortune for China until 1843. 



In 1838 it was even proposed to abolish the gardens 

 at Kew; but in 1840, after their condition had been 

 reported upon by Dr. Lindley, her Majesty was 

 pleased to transfer them to what is now the Depart- 

 ment of Works ; and shortly afterwards Sir W. J. 

 Hooker, then Professor of Botany at Glasgow, was 

 appointed Director. Among the most important 

 acts of this most energetic administrator was the 

 establishment, in 1847, of the first public Museum of 

 Economic Botany in the world. The nucleus of this 



