376 History of Ceylon Botany. 



conceived a strong desire for botanical travel, with the assistance of 

 his teacher, Sir W. J. Hooker, he started on a collecting expedition 

 to Brazil, from which country he sent home 60,000 specimens, 

 representing 3000 species, while his own collection comprised 6000 

 species of flowering plants alone, and he brought back with him to 

 England, in 1841, a large number of living plants. His journal 

 appeared in the ' Companion to the Botanical Magazine ' and in 

 the 'Annals of Natural History,' and the descriptions of his new 

 genera in the ' Journal of Botany ' A more detailed account of this 

 journey, having been prepared by him on the voyage out to Ceylon, 

 was published in 1846 as 'Travels in the interior of Brazil.' 

 Gardner showed his energy by issuing, four months after his arrival 

 in Ceylon, the first of those reports on the Garden which have since 

 then been continued annually. In 1845 ne visited Madras, and 

 botanised in the Neilgherry Hills with Wight, in conjunction with 

 whom and Dr. M'Clelland he became editor of the 'Calcutta 

 Journal of Natural History.' In this journal he was writing 

 ' Contributions towards a Flora of Ceylon ' during the last year 

 of his life, and he also drew up, in 1848, 'Some Remarks on the 

 Flora^ of Ceylon,' which were printed in the appendix to Lee's 

 translation of Ribeyro; but his premature death from apoplexy, 

 at Nuwara Eliya, on March 10th, 1849, destroyed the hopes that had 

 been built upon his great capacity. Gardner's herbarium, com- 

 prising 14,000 specimens, was mostly purchased by the British 

 Museum. His name is commemorated by the Leguminous genus 

 Gardneria, Wallich. 



On Gardner's death his place was taken, also on the recom- 

 mendation of Sir William Hooker, by a botanist who had already 

 achieved a singular reputation, G-eorg-e Henry K.endrick 

 Thwaites, F.R.S., who probably has done more for our 

 scientific and practical knowledge of the vegetable products of 

 Ceylon than any one man. Thwaites was born at Bristol in 181 1, 

 and began life as an accountant, devoting his leisure impartially 

 to entomology and microscopical botany, chiefly that of the 

 cryptogams. His earliest paper was ' Notes on a Species of 

 Sty lops' (an' insect parasitic on the bee), written in 1838, though 

 not published till 1846 ('Trans. Entomol. Soc.,' vol. iii.), and he 

 never abandoned entomology. He was so recognised as a com- 

 petent biologist as to be engaged by his fellow townsman, Dr. 

 W. B. Carpenter, to revise the second edition of his ' General 

 Physiology ' in 1841. In conjunction with Christopher Edmund 

 Broome, he investigated the structure of truffles : his earliest 

 botanical note, contributed to the ' Phytologist ' in 1841, was on the 

 occurrence of Asplenium lanceolatum near Bristol ; and his first 

 paper of importance was one ' On the Occurrence of Tetraspores 

 in Algse ' in the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History ' for 

 1846, which was followed by others, mostly phycological, in the 

 same magazine. An acute observer and expert microscopist, 



