XXIV MEMOIRS OF THE 
duced to about one thousand copies; and at the present 
time is considerably below that number. 
Last year, 1826, Dr. John Sims, at an advanced age, 
gave up the editorship of the work, and retired from his 
practice and London altogether, and has settled at Dorking 
in Surrey, in quiet retirement. Mr. Samuel Curtis (who 
married the daughter of Mr. William Curtis, the author of 
it) has become the sole proprietor, and is conducting it, 
under the editorship of Dr. Hooker, the Regius Professor of 
Botany in the University of Glasgow, under whose able 
and judicious selections, and whose great taste and skill in 
the drawings, with the addition of minute dissections to 
completely illustrate every part of the subject described, 
it is hoped that the work will meet with the extended 
patronage its merit deserves. 
We forbore, in the long article we made on the artists 
employed by Mr. Curtis, to mention one, as coming more 
properly in this place ; we allude to Mr. William Graves ; 
whose name cannot appear on the work, like the drawer or 
the engraver, but whose skill is set forth on the face of 
almost every plate: for, singular to relate, he was the con- 
stant, undeviating friend and assistant to Mr. Curtis, from the 
time he commenced business in 1771, and has continued to 
colour the whole of his works from their commencement. 
From such extensive practice, it is supposed he has coloured 
more plates on Natural History than any living artist in the 
same time ; and even now, at the age of seventy-three, is in 
full and lively possession of every faculty ; and we could 
even call the attention of those capable of judging of his 
art to the volume of the present year, as a comparison with 
any work extant. 
To return to the period of the commencement of the 
Botanical Magazine, we find Mr. Curtis at his garden at 
Lambeth Marsh ; where, although the situation was most 
unpropitious for many plants which cannot bear the smoke 
