1886.] President's Address. xxxi 



tive flora. It is quite another thing to be a botanical collector, 

 travelling in search of plants through outlandish countries, often in peril 

 of life, always poor and certain to receive little recognition. Yet the 

 number of these labourers who bear the burden and heat of the day, 

 and bring the erudite describer his materials, is by no means small. 

 Nor will they cease from the face of the earth so long as the love of 

 wild nature and a certain strain of gipsyhood combine to make men 

 unable to endure the monotony of labour which brings no ideas. I 

 have known a good many British examples of these humble worthies, 

 men like William Grardiner of Dundee, Ibbotson of Stokesley, Richard 

 Buxton of Manch(jster, and the annals of botany in this Colony show 

 men of the same type, — fortes, most certainly, but unknown outside 

 the botanical world, simply quia carent vate sacro. 



The Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope could not have 

 existed long without some striking examples of its wonderful flora 

 being sent home in vessels touching on their return voyage from the 

 East Indies. Holland was throughout the 16th, 17th and part of the 

 18th centuries at the head of the European horticulturo. Matthias 

 L'Obel or Lobelius, once court physician to King James the First, in 

 the j)reface to his Plantarmn seu Stirpium Historia, praises the zeal of 

 the wealthy Dutch burgomasters Id bringing plants from the Levant 

 and the Indies, and avers that their gardens contained more choice 

 exotics than all the gardens of Europe beside. There was a fine 

 garden at Leiden Q), founded in 1577, second only in antiquity to that 

 of Pisa and of Padua. The city of Amsterdam woke up to establish 

 one in friendly rivalry in 1684, and to these two centres the floral 

 riches of the Cape would naturally be drawn. Cluyt and Pauw, whose 

 names are commemorated in the genera Clmjtia and Pavia, successively 

 directed the Leiden garden, and to it the celebrated professor Charles 

 L'Ecluse, better known as Clusius, was attracted from Frankfort as 

 botanical professor. The most renowned physicians of the day gave 

 public prelections upon the new plants which from time to time 

 flowered in the gardens. Among these may be named Bontius and 

 the illustrious Boerhaave, Johannes and Casj^ar Commelin, Vorstius, 

 Hermann and Adrian van Roy en. The collection of natural curiosities 

 of all kinds from the countries visited by the Dutch mercantile marine, 

 then at its best, became the fashion of the day. No doubt the acqui- 

 sition of rare and curious objects was, with most, a mere amusement, 

 like the modern cult of hric-d-hrac and old china, but it served science 

 well. Albertus Seba, of Amsterdam, gathered together his wonderful 

 museum, ojpus ciu mdlum par exstitit, as his volume describing it says 

 upon the title-page. Hunting the elder, of Grroningen, spent his 

 whole fortune on his garden of exotics, and was glad ultimately to 

 dispose of it to the Municipality, accepting an appointment as its 

 curator. The wealthy Cliifort outshone all private cultivators in his 

 splendid establishment at Hartecamp, near Haarlem, and Linnseus, in 

 his youth, was glad to become Cliifort' s botanist, and to catalogue, 

 describe, and figure the rarer plants of the collection. Even the 

 gambling on the stock excnange took a tinge from the prevailing 

 fashion, and the bubble speculation of the South Sea Company in 

 England, and of the bank schemes of M. Law in France were repre- 

 sented in Holland by a Tulip-mania. Shares in the possession of a 



(^) See a sketcli of its history by Boerhaave, iu hia " Index alter Plautarum," 4to. 

 Lugd. Bat., 1727, pp. 18—34. 



