1886.] Presidenfs Address. xliii 



for the Eoyal Gardens being reduced, Bowie was recalled, and spent 

 some time at Kew, unattached, but engaged in arranging such dried 

 plants as he had accumulated. He seems to have become incapable 

 of regular horticultural work, and though several of his patrons did 

 what they could for him, his want of application and business aptitude 

 prevented his thriving. His great pleasure was to spend his time 

 among the free and easy company of bar-parlours, recounting apocry- 

 phal stories of his Brazilian and Cape travels, largely illustrated with 

 big snake and wildebeest adventures. In April, 1827, he returned to 

 the Cape, with the intention of dealing in objects of natural history, 

 especially Cape bulbs. As Villette had just sold off the greater part 

 of his zoological collections, and was giving up his establishment at 

 the corner of Wale-street and Long-street, Bowie hoped to take over 

 the chief part of this export trade. His temper and want of per- 

 severance and tact prevented his making anything out of the oppor- 

 tunity. He writes in a very dissatified strain of his prospects : " There 

 is not a snob, a tinker, or tailor, or any other ignorant ass here but is 

 dealing in cats, dogs, and monkeys, and by the opposition to each 

 other, and re-selling of specimens, the prices are raised far beyond 

 their value, considering risk of sea voyage. There is even an officer 

 of the army who has sometimes forty soldiers told oft' at a time to 

 collect for him." Again, he falls upon the historic Fathers of the 

 Eastern Province with characteristic bitterness: ^'I find Cape Town ■ 

 much the same, but so many of the rascally settlers in it that I have 

 no inducement to join in chance company. Those wretches are 

 ashamed of their Radicalism, and swear through the world that they 

 are pure, independent, respectable Englishmen.'' His hopes of 

 finding employment as the manager of a botanic garden, then much 

 talked of, but not started till some years subsequently, were dis- 

 appointed, and he seems by all accounts to have led an aimless, 

 irregular life, often in great poverty, always complaining of ill-treat- 

 ments, lack of patronage and appreciation. It was his wont to boast 

 largely of his services to science, forgetting that all he had done was 

 to fetch and carry for pay. The vainglorious character of the man is 

 well illustrated by the volumes of pen-and-ink tracings of the plants 

 in the Botanical Ma^azme, which he used to exhibit as original sketches 

 of plants discovered by him. Towards the close of a wasted life he 

 was, more as a matter of charitable commiseration than for any per- 

 sonal usefulness, employed as gardener by Mr. E. H. Arderne, of 

 Claremont, in whose nominal service he died 30th June. 1869. 



Dr. A. H. Haworth coupled this collector's name with a series of 

 plants originally forming part of the genus Aloe, but subsequent 

 writers; deeming the grounds of separation insufficient, the name 

 Bowica was dropped. Dr. W. H. Harvey, who, as a resident of the 

 Cape, had some knowledge of Bowie, resuscitated the name in a 

 monotypic Eastern liliaceous genus. Bowiea voluhilis, Harv. is figured 

 in the Botanical Magazine, tab. 5619 ; it was not, however, discovered 

 by the coUecter whose name it bears, but by Mr. Henry Hutton, in 

 the neighbourhood of the old Katberg convict station, and has since 

 been gathered in many other places, particularly in Kafirland. 



Christian Frederick Ecklon was born at Apenrade, in Schleswig- 

 Holstein, December 17, 1795. Dr. Neuber. a physician of some note 

 at Kiel, and a fair botanist, assisted him in his studies, and 

 encouraged him to qualify himself as an apothecary. He had thus 



