REMINISCENCES OF A VOYAGE TO AND FROM CHINA. 
favour in his agency. He answered, “ No;” and added, that “unless 
we had a legal claim, which we could substantiate in a court of law, 
no attention could be paid to our application.” We replied, that “the 
deceased was too generous and honourable a character, to render it 
necessary to bind him by any written agreement; so that nothing of 
the kind existed.” He said, “Very well”—and so our adventure 
ended. 
Before this interview, all our drawings, specimens, and seeds, had 
been delivered to the purser; but what became of them we never 
learnt. The executor also told us that the shattered remains of the 
plants had been disposed of to George Hibbert, Esq., of Clapham, at 
that time, and for many years after, a most ardent and munificent 
collector of plants. 
We never gained correct information of either the number or the 
names of the plants which we introduced, or were the means of intro¬ 
ducing, into England in 1794. Those on board of the other ships of 
the deet, which looked so well at St. Helena, we had no means of 
knowing anything, or to whom they were presented; and it was only 
of a few that went to Clapham that w r e ever heard of, and that only 
occasionally and indirectly ; for soon after our return to England we 
left London, and became located in a distant county, where a variety 
of new duties were imposed, very different indeed from the study of 
exotic plants or of their history. 
It only remains for us to state what w r ould have been our plan of 
proceeding in transporting Chinese plants, had it been our fate, as it 
was our wish, to have been sent a second time. And here, perhaps, v r e 
should pause, and acknowledge with gratitude what we personally owe 
to an overruling Providence, which, by a concatenation of events, pre¬ 
vented our sailing a second time in the Triton; for on her next voyage 
out that ship was taken, by stratagem, by a French privateer, and 
carried into the Mauritius ; Captain Burnyeat , several of his officers , 
and crew , being murdered in cold blood on the quarter-deck ! This 
would have been to us a far greater disappointment than the first, 
with loss of happiness, and probably with loss of life ! 
But to return to what may yet be of use to others who may be 
employed in transporting plants from China, or from countries in corre¬ 
sponding latitudes, we would advise that a stout grated frame of wood 
be erected over the space which can be best spared, which will be that 
immediately behind the skylight on the poop-deck of an Xndiaman, 
or any other similarly-built ship. The top of this grated cage should 
be in one panel, moveable at pleasure, to permit access to the plants 
VOL, V,—-NO. LXfll. XX 
