LECTURE ON THE PELAEGONITTM. 



15 



Parkinson speaks as that worthy, curious, and dilligent searcher 

 and preserver of all Nature's rarities and varieties. It was in all 

 probability amongst the treasures acquired in his voyage to Bar- 

 bary, in the fleet sent out against the Algerines in 1620. When, 

 in 1629, he became gardener to Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles L, 

 this plant was in his famous collection at Lambeth, and was thence 

 sent forth as the pioneer of the Pelargoniums and the Pelargonium 

 Society. As the Cape was discovered in 1497, the plant had 123 

 years to complete the journey to the Mediterranean, and no doubt 

 had the help of Portuguese traders in so doing. 



It is singular that John Tradescant, who was an Englishman, 

 born in "Worcestershire, and probably of French extraction, was 

 always regarded as a Dutchman. It is singular in this connection, 

 because subsequent to his introduction of the first Cape Pelargonium, 

 the Dutch were certainly the introducers of a dozen or more species 

 that soon after came into Europe. In Dr* James Sherard's won- 

 derful garden at Eltham, there were in 1732 half a dozen species. 

 In the second edition of Miller, published 1733, there are twenty 

 species of African " Geraniums," and these are all Cape Pelargo- 

 niums. This brings us to the publication by Linnaeus of the " Ge- 

 nera Plantarum" in 1737, and the "Species Plantarum" in 1753, 

 when the twenty-five species of Pelargoniums known to him were 

 described as Geraniums for the last time in any work of high 

 authority. In 1787 L'Heritier distinguished them by the signs I 

 have already mentioned. In the "Hortus Kewensis," published 

 in 1812, as many as 102 species and hybrids are described as then 

 in cultivation at Kew, and the list includes triste, grossularoides, 

 zonale, inquinans, lateripes, peltatum, grandiflorum, quercifolium, 

 and fulgidum. 



The splendid garden varieties of Pelargoniums that afford us so 



much delight are in a certain sense the creations of human skill. 



Nature never needed such things and did not trouble to produce them. 



They are the products of careful systematic hybridising and crossing, 



and they represent the talent and perseverance of the florists during 



a period of sixty-five years — a period so brief considering what has 



been accomplished that it shrinks to a moment when we compare the 



original wildings with the splendid flowers of this day. In the year 



m 



