xlvi Presidenfs Address. [J^^ty 28, 



within a short distance of Cape Town. He got together a collection 

 of native remedies to be sent by the apothecary Scheuble, the succes- 

 sor of Polemann, to the Exhibition of 1851, and now and then pre- 

 pared herbal medicines for old-fashioned folk who preferred kruiden 

 to the remedies of the qualified practitioner. Dr. Wallich, the cele- 

 brated Indian botanist, saw him in 1843, in poor health and unable 

 to accompany him on any lengthened excursions. In 1851 Dr. 

 Berthold Seemann, then Naval Surgeon on HMS Hercdd, visited him, 

 and found him in much the same enfeebled condition, declining to 

 join the party from the ship in their ascent of Table Mountain. On 

 ithis occasion Zeyher, R. Baur, ( ^ "' ) and C. F. Juritz were the guides. 

 In 1863 Ecklon was living at Sea Point, occupying, I am informed, a 

 small solitary house to the right of the road to Clifton, which, from 

 the odd collections of native plants brought in by the tenant, was 

 nicknamed "Botany Bay." Next year came the Prusso-Danish war 

 for the possession of Schleswig-Holstein, ending in the cession of that 

 province by the weaker belligerent. In the clean sweep made subse- 

 quently of all things Danish, Ecklon's pension was struck off, and the 

 old man found himself, at sixty-nine years of age, deprived of the 

 meagre pittance on which alone he had for the last t^^enty years con- 

 trived to exist. At this juncture a few friends, who had known him 

 long, kindly clubbed together a little monthly subscription to keep 

 him from actual want of food. He still crept about for a few years 

 in the neighbourhood of the Kloof, the Lion's Mountain, and the 

 Platteklip slopes, always bringing in a handful of poor little twigs 

 and leaves, as if in memory of his old collecting daj-s, or would sit for 

 hours in the apothecaries' stores in town, childishly watching the 

 compounding of the customers' medicines. The ^vinter of 1868 was a 

 severe one. Two medical men, who had alwaj^s been kindly thought- 

 ful of the old man's ailments, found him wretchedly ill and despon- 

 dent, induced him to consent to be removed to the Somerset Hospital, 

 and, as one of them phrased it, " physicked him with strong soup and 

 good wine." He rallied a little, but never left the hospital, and died 

 there, December, 1868, aged seventy-three. 



The personal history of Karl Ludwig Philip Zeyher, the other 

 partner in this botanical firm, is mixed up with that of Ecklon. He 

 was born at Dillenberg, August 2nd, 1799, and was early placed in 

 the service of his uncle, Johann Michael Zeyher, head gardener at the 

 Grand Duke Karl Theodore of Baden's wonderful toy-garden at 

 Schwetzingen, a place formed at vast cost, when fashion demanded that 

 a garden should be filled with sham ruins, artificial waterfalls, shower 

 bath temples and plaster statues. Thedor Hartweg, the celebrated 

 botanical traveller, was the director. F. W. Sieber, a strange erratic 

 genius, had, among other projects, attempted to form what lie termed 

 a Reifie Anstalf, something like the Unio Ifincraria of Hochstetter and 

 Steudel, for the collection and distribution of objects of natural liistory 

 of all kinds. He secured the services of Kohaut, Schmidt, Wrba, Dol- 



('■') Richard Loopold Baur, a worthy Moravian missionary at Shihih, in the Queen's 

 Town district, was born Septemher U, 1825, at Ebcrsdorf, in the principality of 

 Reuss. Ho came in 1847 to the Cape, haviup: qualified himself as an apothecary, and 

 spent eight years in the AVcstern Province, always ardently attached to botany. His 

 most beautifully prepared specimens from the station founded by him at ta/.iya, in 

 Transkeian Kafirland, were sent in the iirst instance to nie at Gill College. Somerset 

 Kast, whence tlie rarer and undescribed species found their way to Kew. Floreat 

 semper ! 



