ODOARDO BECCARI. 
167 
with five natives another : and his penetration of southern Sumatra 
a third. When, and in a large part where he travelled, head-hunt- 
ing was among the inhabitants an honourable pastime. In Sumatra 
he discovered the Aroid, Amorphophallus Titanum , — the tuber 1 2 
so heavy that it required two men to carry it. In Borneo it was 
his wont to fell the enormous Dipterocarps and other forest trees, 
that the material which he collected might be perfect. He never 
missed an opportunity of collecting and though Singapore was to 
him but the means of getting into the wilder lands, he collected not 
a little in the island. 
Repatriating himself finally in 1880, Beccari settled down in 
Florence to study his immense collections, and to publish his re- 
sults, his home an old castle, and his way of living very simple. 
There he married : and three sons fought for the Allies in the 
Great War. 
In the first short interval between his expeditions, he had 
founded the Xuovo Giornule botanico Italiano, which is still 
published as the organ of the Societa botaniea Italiano. On his 
return from his second expedition to the Far East lie commenced 
his " Malesia ” being essays on groups of interesting Malayan 
plants, beautifully illustrated, by his own pencil, the cost of repro- 
duction met in part by means of a grant from the Bentham Trus- 
tees- in London: the first volume appeared at Genoa in 1877, the 
second from 1884 to 1886 and the third from 1886 to 1890, In 
1892 he was occupied jointly with Sir Joseph Hooker in mono- 
graphing the Indian palms for the Flora of British India. In 
1902 he published his Nelle foreste di Borneo, which was trans- 
lated into English (1904) by Dr. E. H. Giglioli in a somewhat 
modified form under the title of “Wanderings in the Great Forests 
of Borneo.” In 1908 and 1914 the Royal Botanic Gardens, Cal- 
cutta, published his two magnificent monographs upon the rattan- 
palms. The plates for these were executed from photographs taken 
by Beccari with the use of an ingenious apparatus for removing 
shadows. In 1912 he monographed the palms of Madagascar for 
tire Museum of Natural History in Paris. He published many 
smaller works, chiefly in the journal Webbia, and for the most part 
upon palms. 
It is significant of this — his great interest — that Malesia opens 
with an account of the palms of New Guinea, and with .the words 
“ a predilection for the plants of this family has made me on all 
occasions to ensure that they should be represented in my collec- 
tions by complete specimens and that I should always re- 
1 This great tuber reached Marseilles alive, but perished there because 
of the inflexibility of the laws against importing living plants. Beccari, 
however, had sent seeds to his friend the Marquis C’orsi Salvatori ; and the 
huge herb flowered at Kew from them in 1889, eleven years from the date 
of Beccari 's finding it. 
2 George Bentham, co-author with Sir Joseph Hooker in the great. 
Genera Plantarum, bequeathed in 1884 a sum of money for the provision 
of illustrations to botanical works. 
R. A. Soc., No. 83, 1921. 
