120 
EARLY EUROPEAN RESEARCHES 
We have first,to consider in this chapter the merits of 
Father' 3? etrilS d’Hncarviile in having sent to Europe dried 
plants and seeds from North-China. He was a Frenchman 
born in 1706. In 1740 he joined tbe Chinese mission of the 
Jesuits and died in 1757 at Peking, where he seems to have 
labored daring the whole period of his sojourn in China. 
D’lncarville’s name has been repeatedly inscribed in the annals 
of botanical science. From the seeds of various Peking plants 
procured by him a number of interesting new species, now-a- 
days much cultivated in Europe, have been raised. A. L. de 
Jussieu dedicated to him the genus Incarvillea represented by 
one species only, the I. sinensis, a beautiful Bignonaceous 
plant with large scarlet flowers, met frequently with in the 
Peking plain and in the mountains, towards the end of 
summer. 
Besides this, D’Inc. transmitted to his instructor Bernhard 
de Jussieu in Paris a collection of dried Peking plants. I am 
not aware to what number of species this collection amounts. 
It has been incorporated with,the herbarium of the Museum of 
Paris, but has never been worked up in any regular form. 
Only a few new plants of it have been occasionally selected for 
publication by French botanists, and, it is strange to say, from 
30 to 80 years and more after the specimens were received in 
Paris. As far as I have been able to trace out from various 
botanical works, the name of Inc. is connected with the 
following Chinese plants, of which he has supplied dried 
specimens or seeds. 
1. Afilantus glandulosa* Desf. Inc. first mentions this 
tree under the name of Frene puant (stinking Ash.) in a 
memoir on Chinese wild silkworms, published a long time 
after his death by Cibot in the 2d vol. of the Mem. cone, les 
Chin. (1777.) p. 583. According to Loudon (Arb. et Frut.) 
seeds of this tree, sent by d’Incarville, had been received in 
England in 1751. It was cultivated in France also, but 
described for the first time by Desfontaines only in 1786. 
2. Cedrdia sinensis. Adr. Jussieu. Inc. mentions this 
tree in the above quoted memoir, p. 583, as Frene odorant. 
From the dried specimens of it sent to Bernh. Jussieu in 1743, 
Adr. Jussieu described it for the first time in 1830. 
3. In the same memoir, p. 583, Inc. speaks of an Oak (of 
Shantung province it seems) which he means to be identical 
with Quercus orientalis castaneae folio, glande recondita in 
capsula crassa et squamosa, which he had seen cultivated in 
Paris and in Toulouse. 1 Lamarck Eno. BoL I 719, refers this 
