f'^Wm '^^'^ '^00^ OF THE EOYAL^^f^ 



extra-European countries, a system by wliich the Society lias 

 confeiTed inestimable benefits upon these kingdoms. In the 

 accounts of 1819 and 1820, appears for the first time a charge of 

 108/. 18.S. 9c?. under the head of foreign importations. 



The Society's minute-books show that a distribution of 

 imported seeds took place in the spring of 1818, and that the 

 formation of a collection of fruit-trees had even then commenced. 

 Plants had also begun to arrive from China, where Mr. John 

 Eeeves, then a most zealous correspondent, and long a liighly 

 esteemed Fellow of the Society, had charged himself with the 

 labour of shipping plants for England, and of causing drawings 

 to be prepared under his own inspection. These di-awings were 

 eventually collected iiito a unicjue series of volumes of authentic 

 representations of Chinese Vegetation. Importations from China 

 in those days were attended by difficulties now imfelt : the 

 true principle of constructing plant-cases was unknown ; and it 

 frequently happened not only that plants perished from the 

 dryness to which they were exposed, but that the chests in which 

 they were packed were unavoidably heaved overboard whUe 

 the ships that carried them were labouring round the Cape of 

 Good Hope. Perseverance and money, aided by the zealous co- 

 operation of the East India Company's ofiicers, overcame these 

 difficulties, and the many varieties of Camellias, Indian Azaleas, 

 Chinese Pfeonies, Eoses, Chrysanthemums, &c., introduced by the 

 Society, are constant reminders of their well-directed energies. 

 Not the least important of these acquisitions was the Glycine 

 (or Wistaria) Sinensis, of which the first living plant (still 

 growing in the Society's Garden at Chiswick) was sent by 

 Mr. Eeeves and arrived in 1818. 



