276 Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
Breyne '''' states that he received a dried specimen of " Frutex aethiopicum 
conifer, fohis cneori salici aemulus " (our Silver Tree), from Dr. Huybert 
in 1644 and from Dr. Slade in 1670, these men evidently being in charge 
of some of the Gardens of that period. 
The first important collector sent to the Cape v^as Francis Masson 
(1772-73). Being commissioned by Kew, he made an extensive collec- 
tion of Proteaceae, many of which now constitute types of Eobert Brown's 
species. Masson was followed by James Niven (1798-1803) as a collector 
for George Hibbert and the Empress Josephine. Most of his collectings 
were cultivated in the former's garden at Clapham, and formed the 
material on which Salisbury, Hibbert's gardener^ worked. It is not quite 
within the scope of this paper to give a list of the collectors following 
Niven, but reference must be made to Drege, Ecklon, Ludwig, and 
Zeyher, whose large collections of Proteaceae enabled Dr. Meisner to 
make a detailed study of the South African material. Passing mention 
may be made to the many species collected by the older botanists and still 
preserved in European herbaria which have not been found since, either 
having become extinct, or, as is also probably the case, the localities of 
many species are very restricted, and former hunting grounds have not 
been revisited by modern collectors. The writer finds this strikingly 
illustrated in the genus Sorocephalus, in which 10 out of the 13 species 
are only known from type specimens, mostly of Niven's collecting. Many 
interesting discoveries of long-lost species, however, have been made. 
Serruria fiorida, Kn., first collected by Thunberg on the French Hoek 
Mountains, was found again in 1891 by the late Dr. MacOwan; Protea 
calocephala, Meisn., sent to Europe over seventy years ago by Baron von 
Ludwig, was collected by Dr. J. Muir in the Kiversdale District last year ; 
Protea caffra, Meisn., last collected by Ecklon and Zeyher on the 
Magalisberg, was again found by Mrs. Dieterlen near Leribe, Basutoland, 
in 1910; Protea neriifolia, E. Br., was figured in the Botanical Register t 
and recorded from the Cape Peninsula; Dr. MacOwan was the first 
to rediscover it on the Peninsula in 1881, and the w^riter found a 
single plant of this species near Platteklip in April, 1910. It is to be 
hoped that many more of these lost or little-known species will yet be 
collected, so as to more fully complete our knowledge of this interesting 
Order. 
The first important systematic publication on the Cape Proteaceae 
appeared in 1720, by Hermann Boerhaave,| containing excellent woodcuts 
of 23 species. Boerhaave divided the Order into the three genera, Lepi- 
* Jacob Breyne, " Exoticarum, Centuria Prima," 1678. 
f Botanical Register, t. 208. 
+ H. Boerhaave, " Index Alter Plantarum quse in Horto Academico Lugduno-Batavo 
aluntur," 1720. 
