1886.] Presidenfs Address. xxxix 



his daily lecture even when in his eightieth year, but would 

 daily drive in from his country house at Tunaberg in a very old 

 carriage as ancient as the fashion of his clothes, celebrated, as the 

 students jocosely said, vetustate mag is quam venustate, and which they 

 nicknamed *' Skallerormen," the rattle-trap. It was not till his 

 eighty-fourth year that he passed over his duty as lecturer to his step- 

 son Forsberg, reserving still to himself the curatorship of the 

 Museum. In the summer of 1828, when suffering from a slight 

 feverish attack, he felt his end was at hand. Ordering himself to be 

 placed in a carriage, he was gently driven over to Upsal, and round 

 all his favourite walks in the Botanic Grarden, taking his farewell 

 view of the objects which had been so dear to him throughout a long 

 life. He expired a few days after his return home, August 8th, 1828, 

 at the advanced age of eighty-five. He was buried at Upsal amid an 

 immense following of students and citizens of every degree. 



It is to be regretted that Thunberg did not early concentrate his 

 great abilities upon the digest of his results. He published four 

 volumes of travels in 1788-93, which were speedily translated into 

 German, English, and French. But with his Cape collections he 

 procrastinated, issuing at first merely a small Prodromus of two parts, 

 in 1794-1800. This was little more than a descriptive catalogue of 

 the briefest kind. His Flora proceeded very slowly. Two parts of 

 the first volume appeared at Upsal between 1807 and 1813. Of 

 the second volume only one part came out in 1818. The whole work 

 was ultimately edited from the author's manuscript in 1823 by Dr. J. 

 A. Schultes, at Stuttgardt. Instead of in good time producing a work 

 worthy of his fame, while yet men were mindful of his scientific zeal, 

 Thunberg frittered away his immense store of observation in a mul- 

 titude of Academic Dissertations, two hundred and ninety-three in 

 number, and many of them bearing on the title page the names of his 

 pupils, as whose oratmies doctm they seem to have appeared. 

 Although one of his panegyrists says sciant posteri nodrum, a quoeshl 

 omni et lucro alienum, partts prcesidii gratis suscepisse — it had been as 

 well if his dissertations had been prefaced by his own name, instead 

 of that of some juvenile sophomore. There would then have been no 

 need to assure us tliat the real author was a quoestv, et lucro alienum. 

 Nevertheless, as long as in our paradise of flowers there wanders a 

 single botanist, so long will the name of Thunberg be held in 

 honoured remembrance. 



I have mentioned the name of Masson ^^) as a comrade of 

 Thunberg's. Francis Masson was a native of Aberdeen, born in 

 1741. Having commenced life as a gardener, he proceeded to 

 London in hope of advancement and further knowledge of his pro- 

 fession. He obtained employment at the Eoyal Gardens at Kew, not 

 then a national institution as at present, but a private royal domain, 

 the pleasure garden of " Farmer George " and his wife Charlotte. 

 The elder Alton was the superintendent. Sir Joseph Banks, return- 

 ing from the East Indies, had made the usual short stoppage at the 

 Cape, and had seen for himself the extraordinary variety and richness 

 of the Cape flora. He, therefore, took an early opportunity of urging 

 upon the King the advantage which might accrue from sending out a 



(^") For most of the detail of Masson's life I am indebted to the full nnd apprecia- 

 tive sketch of his work by Mr. James Brittou, F.L.S., iii Journal of Boteoty, 1884, 

 pp. 1)4-123 



