MEMOIR. 73 
edgings, or well laid-out or well-kept gravel walks. It is, in fact, 
merely an uncommonly excellent collection of hardy plants; and 
while it would doubtless fail to please the lover of tasteful gardening, 
it would as certainly prove highly interesting to the botanist and 
to the curious cultivator. Mr. Don, we have been told, has an 
ample nursery of rare hardy plants, for which he receives orders 
from the curious in different parts of Britain; and, when the pro- 
ceeds of these shall enable him, we understand it to be his intention 
to improve the exterior appearance of his garden.” 1 
Again, in the “Scots Magazine” for June, 1810, Dr. Neill, under 
the heading of Scottish Alpine Plants, thus refers to Don’s work 
and garden : — 
“That indefatigable and acute botanist, Mr. George Don, of 
Forfar, has lately explored Ben Lawers, and some of the neigh- 
bouring mountains in Breadalbane, for the fourth or fifth time. His 
success has been greater than on any former occasion. He found 
the Carex ustulata or Angebrannte Segge of Willdenow, figured by 
Schkuhrius, in his monograph on this difficult genus, under the 
title of C. atro-fusca. It has hitherto been considered as a native 
only of the mountains of Lapland and of Iceland. It was growing 
at no great elevation, but sparingly. He found likewise two rare 
species of Eriophorum, now for the first time ascertained to be 
natives of Great Britain—viz., Z. gracile of ‘Annals of Botany,’ and 
E. Scheuchzeri, neither of them described in Willdenow’s new 
edition of the ‘Species Plantarum’; the last-mentioned curious and 
interesting species seemed to have been washed down from some 
inaccessible cliffs and crevices of the mountain, the plants being 
apparently newly rooted in the alluvion from the summit. Mr. Don 
having previously observed E. alpinum in the Moss of Restennet, 
near Forfar, has thus had the merit of adding three species of one 
genus to the British Flora. Some non-descripts are likewise among 
his recent discoveries, particularly a Cerastium and an Arenaria ; 
and he brought with him several little known species of grasses 
belonging to the genera Poa, Triticum, and Festuca, some of which 
indeed may also prove non-descript. All of these novelties Mr. 
n is to endeavour to cultivate in his garden at Dove Hillock, 
close by Forfar, a spot where a greater variety of curious hardy 
and alpine plants is collected than is perhaps to be met with in the 
finest gardens in Great Britain.” 
1 Here we have a picture of the conditions which led to the confounding of plants 
referred to on page 142.—/. B. 
