Xli THE HISTORY OF THE BOTANICAL MAGAZINE 
in which it was introduced was very remarkable. <A dried 
specimen was sent to Peter Collinson, (who had a fine garden 
of hardy plants at Mill Hill, Hendon), from Providence 
Island, Bahamas; but the tuber appearing to have life in 
it, he sent it to the garden of a gentleman named Wager, 
where it was placed in a hotbed, and grew and flowered the 
followimg summer. 
BRADLEY. 
Another book meriting notice here is Bradley’s Historia 
Plantarum Succulentarum, originally published in decades 
between the years 1716 and 1727, and subsequently as a 
whole in 1734. Only five decades appeared. The copy at 
Kew is of the second edition, and partly coloured by an 
amateur hand. Among the genera represented are Cereus, 
Mesembryanthemum, Agave, LEchinocactus, [uphorbia, 
Aloe, Gasteria, Stapelia, Haworthia, Sedum, Cotyledon, 
Kleinia and Crassula, Bradley claims to have himself in- 
troduced many of the plants figured from Amsterdam into 
English gardens. 
In 1725 Dr. J. Douglas commemorated in a special 
pamphlet the colonization in Guernsey of the beautiful 
Japanese Nerine sarniensis, bulbs of which had been cast 
ashore from the wreck of a ship, and grew and established 
themselves “to the surprise of the inhabitants and the 
delight of the florists and botanists.” 
DILLENIUS. 
About the same date (1732) that Martyn’s expensive 
project came to an end there appeared that wonderful 
monument of talent and industry, Dillenius’s Hortus EBltham- 
ensis, concerning which Linnzus says :—“ Est opus botani- 
cum quo absolutius mundum non vidit.” It is a handsome 
folio of 437 pages and 324 uncoloured plates,' illustrating 
417 different plants, a large portion of which, it is true, 
would be regarded by a gardener as botanical rather than 
ornamental. Nevertheless it is a noble record of the begin- 
ning of the present era in flower gardening, and an enduring 
monument to the botanical skill of its author and the zeal of 
his patron, Dr. James Sherard, in cultivating flowers. His 
* On the authority of Sibthorp (Pulteney, Historical and Biographical 
Sketches of the Progress of Botany in England, ii., p. 182, in a footnote), 
it appears that Dillenius himself coloured some copies of this work, one 
of which he presented to the Bodleian Library. 
