a 
Travel Tales 
PI ant Coll ector 
E. H. WILSON 
Assistant Director of the Arnold Arboretum 
Author of “Romance of Our Trees,” “Aristocrats of the Garden,” “A Naturalist in Western China,” 
and other works 
FAREWELL TO AUSTRALIA 
A Group of Gallant Figures in the Army of Pioneers to Whom Modern Gardeners Owe 
Much—An Australian Botanic Garden That Has Nearly Touched the Century Mark 
Editors’ Note: By bis unparalleled contribution to Occidental gardens of more than 2,000 new trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants brought back from a fourteen- 
year search in the Far East, Mr. IVilson has won the permanent gratitude of gardeners everywhere. Many of his introductions are already established in popular favor 
and nearly 200 have received the authoritative stamp of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Merit. 
The exclusive privilege of publishing these accounts of “Chinese tVilson’s’’ recent plant explorations through Africa, Asia, and Australia, has been accorded The 
Garden Magazine. 
• Copyright, D. P. & Co., 1923 
[OW let us enquire a little into the history of the coming 
into northern gardens of the Australian plants discussed 
in the preceding articles, and then we will bid adieu to 
that part of the world and look to Africa. 
The agencies have been various, and all sorts and conditions of 
men have played a part. It is the province of the taxonomic 
botanist to describe and fix names to the plants of the world; and 
not often he, too, has won them from the wilds to our gardens. 
A good deal of the material has come to hand through devious 
channels and much of the work of introduction has been done 
by men of great enthusiasm, often well versed in practical 
knowledge of the art and craft of gardening, but of little other 
learning. Men who gave heed to little save of the plants they 
loved and of themselves thought not at all; men of obscure origin 
who flashed for a brief while across the garden-world then dis¬ 
appeared without trace; men of unknown birth whose place and 
time of death are unrecorded. To such men—a gallant army— 
our gardens are largely indebted, and we who love our flowers 
may well be grateful to these hardy, forceful pioneers. 
I T HAS been stated already that the buccaneer and navigator, 
Dampier, the first Englishman to visit Australia in 1688 and 
1699, collected and dried a few plants which are still preserved at 
Oxford University. 
The famous Sir Joseph Banks (portrait reproduced on page 35, 
March G. M.) and his companion Doctor Solander collected 
nearly 1000 species at Botany Bay and other places on the east 
coast. Banks introduced Casuarina torulosa from New South 
Wales and this was the first Australian plant to be cultivated in 
Europe—it was growing in Kew Gardens 
in 1772. 
Through all the story of early explora¬ 
tion looms the figure of this great, good man; 
Sir Joseph Banks, scientist and explorer, pa¬ 
tron and devotee of botany and horticul¬ 
ture, who from his return to England in 
1771 to his death in 1820 never lost an 
opportunity of adding Australian plants to 
the gardens of the North. Co-discoverer 
with Captain Cook of New South Wales, he 
labored for the founding and afterward for 
the advancement of the Colony and well- 
earned the title, affectionately bestowed 
upon him by a grateful people, of the “ Fa¬ 
ther of Australia.” 
Archibald Menzies collected at King 
George’s Sound; and then followed Robert 
Brown with the botanical artist, Ferdinand Bauer. These 
collections formed the bases of Brown’s “ Prodromus.” The 
first French expedition—that of D’Entrecasteaux in 1792— 
had the botanist Labillardiere on board; that of Baudin in 1800 
had Leschenault; and that of Freycinet was accompanied by 
Gaudichaud. With these botanists were gardener-assistants 
and many plants were introduced into France. 
Australia was, indeed, fortunate not only in the number but in 
the caliber of the botanists who early visited her new-found 
shores and well and truly laid the keel of her botany. The 
assistants to Banks and Solander, four in number (Buchan 
Parkinson, Reynolds, and Sporing) all died on the voyage. The 
vessel was wrecked and nearly lost at Cape Tribulation in 
Queensland; and Captain Cook, Banks, and Solander were all 
stricken with fever at Batavia in Java and barely escaped death. 
The material on which the French botanist L’Heritier based 
the genus Eucalyp¬ 
tus was collected 
at Adventure Bay, 
Tasmania, in 
January, 1777, by 
David N; Ison, a 
young Kew man, 
whom Banks was 
instrumental in 
sending with Cook 
on his third voy¬ 
age. Nelson after¬ 
ward accompanied 
FERDINAND VON MUELLER 
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM 
TWO HISTORIC FIGURES OF DISTINC¬ 
TION IN AUSTRALIAN HORTICULTURE 
Allan Cunningham (left) 1791-1839, the greatest 
of Australian plant explorers and one of the 
greatest plant collectors of all times. Sir Ferdi¬ 
nand von Mueller (above) 1825-1896, dur¬ 
ing his lifetime the dominant figure in Australian 
botany, his extensive travel and collections hav¬ 
ing added enormously to the knowledge of the.- 
flora of Australia 
