June S7, 1865. ] 



JOURNAL OF HOETICTJLTUEE AND COTTAGE aAEDENEK. 



481 



and loam otherwise impregnated with iron, which is well 

 known to favour the production of blue flowers in the 

 Hydrangea, the organised matter referred to is formed from 

 juices impregnated with iron oxide, and so produces blue 

 flowers. The intensity of the blue is, I believe, according 

 to the perfect oxidation of the iron. Chalk water never 

 fails to counteract this effect of the oxide on the flower, as 

 we have often proved here, so that, to give the fairest 

 chance to the experiment of getting blue Hydrangeas, I 

 would recommend the cuttings to be taken as early in the 

 spring as possible, to strike or root them in red sand, to grow 

 them in nothing but red loam and iron filings, according 

 to the above proportions, and never to water them but with 

 rain-water: but I am not sure whether rusty water from 

 hot-water pipes would not add to the success of the experi- 

 ment ; at any rate this rusty water is not injurious to these 

 Hydrangeas. In some parts of the country the natural soil 

 will produce blue Hydrangeas, and in such places it is 

 difficult to meet with pink ones ; and, what is singular 

 enough, the Rhododendrons vriU flourish in such soil, although 

 apparently devoid of all traces of vegetable matter. There 

 is also a kind of peat earth which invariably turns the pink 

 to a blue Hydrangea, but all the peat that we have access 

 to here (Suffolk), does just the contrary. To have pink 

 Hydrangeas next summer, let us, therefore, make our cut- 

 tings in August from pink parents."] 



SIEBEE. THE PLANT COLLECTOE. 



Feancis William Sieber was a native of Prague, in 

 Bohemia, and from this inland capital he succeeded in 

 extending his botanical travels, and those of his assistants, 

 over several distant portions of the globe, and I think that 

 the number of specimens of plants collected thus may 

 ■well be put down at one million. As is the case with 

 Beethoven, who is said to have been a son of King Frederic 

 William II. of Prussia, Sieber was a son of the Emperor 

 Francis of Austria, and he certainly bore a resemblance to 

 some of the fairer members of the Hapsburg family. His 

 frame was well formed, and this, and the vivacity of his mind, 

 fitted him for the task he had traced out for himself. 



It was about the year 1812 that Hoppe, of Ratisbon, 

 began to publish his "Dried Plants of Germany ;" Sturm's 

 "Flora," also composed of small, neatly-coloured engrav- 

 ings, excited the attention of the studious amongst us. 

 Sieber, whose relations were in easy circumstances, had 

 received a good school education, and studied botany under 

 Willibald Schmidt, the author of the " Flora BohemiiB," in 

 folio. After some preliminary excursions in the Bohemian 

 Sudetsh, he started for the Austrian, Carinthian, and Sty- 

 rian Alps, Saussure and Hacquet being his patterns then. 

 It was a pleasure to listen to Sieber, when he related how 

 he first found and collected the Wulfenia carinthiaca, those 

 rare Saxifragas, and Gentianas, only to be found in certain 

 remote localities of Carinthia and Carniola; already my 

 departed friend collected, al in <jrosso, one and two hundred 

 specimens, if he could get them. Sieber trafficked from the 

 &:st, like Hoppe, in plants, but not then to the same ex- 

 tent as when he published his " Flora Exsiccata Novae Hol- 

 landise," &c. 



Sieber's next trip was to Italy, then under Napoleon's 

 rule, and difficult of access, especially for an Austrian 

 subject. The " Flora Italica," was the first considerable 

 issue of dried plants, and the printed tickets to tbose spe- 

 cimens were a curiosity in themselves. " Ixia bulbocodium, 

 in rupe Tarpeja, Eoma;" " AnthyUis barba-Jovis, in nubibus 

 Insulse Caprese;" " Lamium garganicum, in monte Gargano, 

 Apuliae," &c. These issues widely diffused the love of botany, 

 and in Bohemia produced a rich crop of distinguished bo- 

 tanists. Of his stay in Naples a curious incident may be re- 

 lated. Being in the island of Capri, he ventured himself on 

 parts of the rocks where no one had ever been before. This, 

 and perhaps the papers he had about him for placing his 

 plants in, attracted the notice and suspicion of those on board 

 some English cruiser in the Bay of Naples, and they fired 

 several cannon shots at our botanical collector, which, how- 

 ever, fortunately did not reach him. 



Returning to Prague from such excursions, a couple of 

 years were occupied in arranging, naming, publishing, and 



disposing of these plants. His subscribers became in suc- 

 cession numerous and important, amongst them the late 

 ffing of Saxony, for whom Sieber collected choice speci- 

 mens {Pracht exemplare) in all his travels. This splendid 

 collection was probably burnt during the outbreak in Dres- 

 den, in 1849. It is natural to suppose that our friend 

 would not have sufficed for the large amount of work con- 

 nected with his enterprise, and he had about him some 

 young gardeners to help him, and thus the idea arose, suc- 

 cessively much expanded, to send some of these youngsters 

 on similar botanical errands. I believe it was young Katschy 

 whom he first sent to Martinique for that purpose. Ima- 

 gine a young Bohemian journeyman gardener going to the 

 forests and mountains of a West India island ! Still those 

 lads all turned out well, especially Boyer, who afterwards 

 became Professor and Director of the Botanical Garden in the 

 Isle of France. Still Sieber used a means to facilitate, nay 

 to make possible, such botanical expeditions. There was a 

 book prepared in smaU folio, and on the leaves were fixed 

 original or cultivated specimens of such plants as were 

 known or supposed to grow in Martinique. I was present 

 when Katschy returned, and certainly there never had 

 arrived in Europe such a vast collection of tropical plants 

 for publication and sale. Sieber generally divided his 

 " Herbaria Sicca " into centuries, which were sold for from 

 forty to sixty or eighty florins (10 to £1) each. 



As Schultes and Hacquet had directed my late friend 

 to the alpine world, it was Tournefort who gave him 

 his easterly direction. Sieber visited first the island of 

 Crete, made a long stay at Canea, ascended the Ida, and 

 as he was a man of manifold acquu-ements, surveyed the 

 Labyrinth. This Cretan, as well as his subsequent Egyp- 

 tian and Jerusalem voyages, appeared in print, and these 

 volumes are even cited now. In Egypt Sieber went up to 

 the first cataract, and many were the rare and new plants 

 published in the " Flora JSgyptiaca," as well as the " Hiero- 

 solymitana." Such travels connected with the collection of 

 tens of thousands of plants were expensive then, but I think 

 that the Emperor Francis had settled an allowance on him 

 or his mother. 



A few years passed again away in the arranging and pub- 

 lishing of these three herbaria. Besides, Sieber was in com- 

 munication with most of the leading botanists of Europe — 

 Tenore, in Naples, De Candolle, &c. ; but he could never 

 have succeeded in such a wide task, if he had viewed botany 

 only in its dry and matter-of-fact features. Sieber read 

 and knew the fine philosophical works which Kant, Sprengel, 

 WiUdenow, and others had published, and many were the 

 pleasant and exciting conversations which I had with him in 

 those rooms of his in the corridor of the old Convent of St. 

 Jacob, in the Kleinseite of Prague. Then he would dress in 

 some of the costumes of chamois hunters, or of Turks and 

 Arabs, which he had brought with him. 



About this time, 1817, Boyer went to Madagascar, and it 

 may be said that he acquired even a public character with 

 King Eadama. The plants sent thence to the Museum of 

 Vienna, the King of Saxony, &c., were surprising. 



But now came the time when my late friend planned and 

 executed his last and greatest botanical expedition — viz., 

 that to the Australian continent. At that time specimens 

 of wild Australian plants were rare even in England, be- 

 cause Banks, Solander, Brown, and Cunningham (?) had 

 not collected specimens for publication and sale ; there- 

 fore Sieber went to the Antipodes. His head quarters were 

 Sydney, the environs of which, and Botany Bay, are rich 

 in plants. But his enterprising spu'it pushed him much 

 further, and he was the first who explored the Blue Moun- 

 tains, and the plains beyond them, shortly before discovered 

 by Wentworth, Lawson, and Blaxland. These collections 

 he made on horseback, not riding himself, because he was 

 a wonderful walker, but the harvest of plants was so 

 great, that they had to be stowed on the back of a horse. 

 These thousands on thousands of specimens could not have 

 been preserved in the ordinary way ; but Sieber had invented 

 an especial method to arrange and dry specimens for the 

 herbarium. 



To account for his subsequent melancholy death, it is to 

 be stated that he was during his travels in communication 

 with the Emperor of Austria ; and when a letter arrived from. 

 Vienna, after a stay of several months in New South Wales, 



