202 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 326. 



He was graduated from Yale College at the age of twenty, 

 and studied medicine, although he never practiced the pro- 

 fession. In 1793 Mr. Elliott was elected a member of the 

 Legislature of South Carolina, and continued to represent 

 his district until 181 2, when he was chosen president of 

 the new State Bank of South Carolina, a position which he 

 filled until his death. Literary and scientific studies, how- 

 ever, occupied much of his time and attention. In 1813 

 he took an active part in establishing the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society of South Carolina, of which he was 

 the president. He was a constant contributor, and, prob- 

 ably, the real editor of the Southern Rcvieiv, one of those 

 short-lived periodicals whose quality is often superior to 

 their financial strength or the appreciation of the public. 



On the organization, in 1825, of the Medical College of 

 South Carolina, Mr. Elliott was appointed professor of 

 natural history and botany, and delivered lectures on these 

 subjects from his chair in that institution without other 

 recompense than the gratification of his desire to make his 

 knowledge useful. He married Esther Habersham, of 

 Savannah, and owned a plantation on the Ogeechee River ; 

 so that during his frequent journeys to Savannah, Charles- 

 ton and Vallambrosa, the name of his Ogeechee place, Mr. 

 Elliott had abundant opportunities to observe the vegeta- 

 tion of the coast-region, and to acquire an accurate knowl- 

 edge of the coast-plants, which formed the basis of his 

 Sketcli of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia, as 

 the classical work is entitled, upon which now rests his 

 reputation as a man of science. 



The first volume of this book bears on the title-page the 

 date of 1821, and the second the date of 1824. It was, 

 however, published in parts, and Dr. Asa Gray was able 

 to assure himself {Am. four. Sci., ser. 3, xiii., 1877) that 

 the first part was published as early as September 26th, 

 1816, and that the beginning of the second volume was 

 issued in 1821. This work, which contains accurate de- 

 scriptions in Latin and English of all plants of his region 

 known to the author, is enriched by many observations 

 upon the medical properties furnished by Dr. Thomas 

 MacBride. 



Mr. Elliott's herbarium is preserved in the Charleston 

 Museum; the manuscript of his book and of several of 

 his unpublished works, including one on shells, are owned 

 by his granddaughter, Miss S. B. Elliott, of Sewanee, Ten- 

 nessee. 



Stephen Elliott died in Charleston on the 28th of March, 

 1830. His body lies in St. Paul's Cemetery in that city, in 

 an unmarked and now unknown grave. His features 

 were long preserved in the Charleston Museum in a bust 

 which, unfortunately, was ruined by the earthquake which 

 visited that city in 1886; and the only portrait of him 

 which is now known to exist is a small engraving made in 

 Philadelphia to decorate the notes of the South Carolina 

 Bank, and now the property of his grandson, Arthur B. 

 Elliott, of Savannah, to whom we are indebted for the op- 

 portunity to have this engraving enlarged for the illustra- 

 tion which is published on page 204 of this issue. 



The name of Stephen Elliott is preserved, too, in a genus 

 of plants of the Heath family, of his discovery, establishedby 

 Dr. Muhlenberg (see p. 206). It consists of three shrubs ; the 

 first of these is one of the rarest of North American plants ; 

 the others are common in the forests of northern japan. 



Abbazia. 



WHY the professional tourist has so long neglected the 

 Adriatic for the Mediterranean, who can say? That 

 times are changing in this respect is evident. Baedeker is 

 about to rise like a fiery planet over Adria, and an in- 

 numerable multitude will soon be disporting itself along 

 the beautiful Dalmatian and east Italian coasts. Then we 

 who came before them all will begin to plume ourselves 

 greatly upon our priority, regretting only, in our hearts, 

 that even we never saw the busy port of Fiume before it 

 had electric light and asphalt paving, handsome moles and 



warehouses, a grand hotel and a Hungarian grain-elevator 

 of a wondrous pattern, and when the picturesque old water- 

 side streets were made impassable by a high wind from the 

 sea. As for Abbazia, nestling under the shelter of the 

 Istrian mountains across the bay, it must have been in- 

 finitely lovelier before it was definitively discovered in this 

 very spring of 1894 by the German Emperor and his 

 numerous progeny. A really unnecessary proportion of 

 the bright little place seems to have been reserved for 

 their exclusive use, and they certainly take a great deal of 

 guarding. A policeman or a soldier meets you at every 

 turn, and if you linger too long in admiration of the bold 

 coast-line, the sapphire sea, the quaint old villages on the 

 hill-tops or the pleasant villas at their base, you will be 

 politely requested to move on. And if you have ventured 

 a step further, and tried to make a humble sketch of some 

 particularly striking point, you will very likely discover 

 that a detective has been told off to watch your further 

 movements. 



Such are the thorns concealed under the early roses of 

 Abbazia, but, in spite of them, it remains delightful. Above 

 all the eye revels in the wealth of greenery. The Istrian 

 hill-sides in their natural state are almost devoid of veereta- 

 tion ; but plant what you will, and it seems to strike root 

 and flourish bravely. The villa-gardens teem with inter- 

 mingled vegetation from the north temperate zone and 

 from the full tropics, and the little public park is a bewil- 

 dering study in landscape-gardening. Of course, the Em- 

 press and the seven princelings have ousted the rest of the 

 world from most of that choicest strip which skirts the 

 shore, but one may still wander along the verdant hill-side 

 at will, or even, at one point, follow a stretch of Daisy- 

 studded turf that might have come from an English park, 

 till a hedge of American Agaves shuts off the deep blue sea, 

 with a Prussian man-of-war in the foreground, and beyond 

 the hazy violet outlines of the gulf islands and the distant 

 mainland. Turning back to the park once more, you see 

 that the place derives a distinctive character for the mo- 

 ment from being all in green. Beds dot the turf indeed, 

 round and oval and square, but they are filled, not with 

 Geraniums and Azaleas, such as decorate the grounds 

 of the neighboring villas, not even with bright Coleus, 

 but with close-cropped mats of Dusty Miller and Eng- 

 lish Ivy, or with plumy, moss-green, southern Grasses. 

 The Laurestinus and Lilac hedges must have bloomed 

 last month ; the hedge of Yew (Taxus baccata) will in time 

 display its berries. Flowers are in store for us, too, on the 

 dark-leaved Oleanders, and the last gay petal of a pink 

 Horse-chestnut flutters down upon my hand from a point 

 so high in air that I had not noticed it at all. Oh, avenues 

 of the woods of Boulogne and La Cambre, you would 

 shrivel with envy could you but see the height and vigor 

 of that tree ! 



A little further on I had with affection a Mexican Yucca, 

 which goes here by the name of Graugriinliche Palmlilie. 

 The east coast of the Adriatic is emphatically polyglot. 

 German being the official tongue, we find the labels affixed 

 to the plants in the park all printed in that language, but it 

 is all Greek to the gardeners, who must be accosted in 

 Italian. Rules and regulations intended for the people are 

 formulated in Croatian, which does not appeal directly to 

 the American intelligence. Zabranjenje ulaz one discovers, 

 after a few lessons in the hard school of experience, means 

 no admittance; but the significance of other warnings I 

 have not yet learned. 



It is the Yucca, by the way, which first leads us to notice 

 that the park is peculiarly rich in American trees and shrubs, 

 and that they have taken most kindly to their transatlantic 

 home. The Tulip-tree and our big evergreen Magnolia 

 are growing side by side, and the finest Sequoia gigantea 

 I have ever seen in the Old World stands on its round of 

 turf, stately and alone. A specially friendly gardener told 

 me the ground had been cleared and the path laid out 

 around it on purpose to show up its perfections when they 

 found how well it was doing, and he bade me observe a 



