The first figure is the flower in its entire state, seen in front, the stamina of course fore-shortened. The second is an angular three-quarter view of the calix. The third is a back view of the calix. The fourth is the calix inclosing the stamina and pistil, round which last they form a fruit or grain. The fifth is the flower stript of its calix, where is seen the germ, the stamina, and the pistil. The sixth is the stamina magnified to twice their size. The seventh is the lower leaf. The eighth, the upper leaf of the flower. The ninth, the germ, or rudiment of the fruit, with the pistil joined to it, at the bottom of which there is a small cavity. The tenth is the seed or fruit entire. The eleventh represents the inside of the seed cut in half.
The leaves of this shrub are of a vivid green, and are joined to the branch by a long pedicle, in the inside of which are the rudiments of another, which I suppose begin to sprout when the large one is injured or falls off.
Though very little acquainted with the scientific part of botany myself, its classes, genera, and species, and still less jealous of my reputation in it, I cannot conceive why my single attention, in charging myself with a number of seeds in distant countries, and giving part to the garden at Paris, should lead to a conclusion that I was so absolutely uninstructed in the science for which at least I had shewn this attachment, that I could not distinguish the plant before us from the acacia vera. Is the knowledge of botany so notoriously imperfect in England, or is the pre-eminence so established in France, as to authorise such a presumption of ignorance against a person, who, from his exertions and enterprise, should hold some rank in the republic of letters among travellers and discoverers?
A compliment was paid me by the Count de Buffon, or by superior orders, in return for the articles I had presented to the king’s cabinet and garden at Paris, that the plants growing from the seeds which I had brought from Abyssinia should regularly, as they grew to perfection, be painted, and sent over to me at London. The compliment was a handsome one, and, I was very sensible of it, it would have contributed more to the furnishing the king’s garden with plants than many lectures on botany, ex cathedra, will ever do.
But it was not necessary to shew his knowledge for the sake of contrasting it with my ignorance, that Mr Jussieu says this bauhinia is by Mr Bruce taken for an acacia vera. Now the acacia vera is a large, wide-spreading, thorny, hard, red-wooded, rough-barked, gum-bearing tree. Its flower, though sometimes white, is generally yellow; it is round or globular, composed of many filaments or stamina; it is the Spina Egyptiaca, its leaves, in shape and disposition, resembling a mimosa; in Arabic it is called Saiel, Sunt, Gerar; and if M. de Jussieu had been at all acquainted with the history of the east, he must have known it was the tree of every desert, and consequently that I must be better acquainted with it than almost any traveller or botanist now alive. Upon what reasonable ground then could he suppose, upon my bringing to him a rare and elegant species of bauhinia, which probably he had not before seen, that I could not distinguish it from an acacia, of which I certainly brought him none?
A large species of Mullein likewise, or, as he pleases to term it, Bouillon Blanc, he has named Verbascum Abyssinicum; and this the unfortunate Mr Bruce, it seems, has called an aromatic herb growing upon the high mountains. I do really believe, that M. de Jussieu is more conversant with the Bouillon Blancs than I am; my Bouillons are of another colour; it must be the love of French cookery, not English taste, that would send a man to range the high mountains for aromatic herbs to put in his Bouillon, if the Verbascum had been really one of these.
Although I have sometimes made botany my amusement, I do confess it never was my study, and I believe from this the science has reaped so much the more benefit. I have represented to the eye, with the utmost attention, by the best drawings in natural history ever yet published, and to the understanding in plain English, what I have seen as it appeared to me on the spot, without tacking to it imaginary parts of my own, from preconceived systems of what it should have been, and thereby creating varieties that never existed.
When I arrived at the Lazaretto at Marseilles, the Farenteit, as it is called in Nubia, or the Guinea-worm, the name it bears in Europe, having been broken by mismanagement in my voyage from Alexandria, had retired into my leg and festered there. The foot, leg, and thigh, swelled to a monstrous size, appearance of mortification followed, and the surgeon, with a tenderness and humanity that did honour to his skill, declared, though reluctantly, that if I had been a man of weak nerves, or soft disposition, he would have prepared me for what was to happen by the interposition of a friend or a priest; but as from my past sufferings he presumed my spirit was of a more resolute and firmer kind, he thought saving time was of the utmost consequence, and therefore advised me to resolve upon submitting to an immediate amputation above the knee. To limp through the remains of life, after having escaped so many dangers with bones unbroken, was hard, so much so, that the loss of life itself seemed the most eligible of the two, for the bad habit of body in which I found myself in an inveterate disease, for which I knew no remedy, and joined to this the prejudice that an Englishman generally has against foreign operators in surgery, all persuaded me, that, after undergoing amputation, I had but very little chance of recovery, besides long and great suffering, want of sleep, want of food, and the weakness that attends lying long in sick-bed, had gradually subdued the natural desire and anxiety after life; every day death seemed to be a lesser evil than pain. Patience, however, strong fomentations, and inward applications of the bark, at length cured me.
It was immediately after receiving my melancholy sentence, that, thinking of my remaining duties, I remembered I had carried abroad with me an order from the king to procure seeds for his garden. Before I had lost the power of direction, I ordered Michael, my Greek servant, to take the half of all the different parcels and packages that were lying by me, made up for separate uses, and pack them so as they might be sent to Sir William Duncan the king’s physician, then in Italy, to be conveyed by him to Lord Rochfort, secretary of state. I by the same conveyance accompanied these with a short letter, wrote with great difficulty,—that it appearing, beyond leaving room for hope, that my return was to be prevented by an unexpected disease, I begged his Majesty to receive these as the last tender of my duty to him.
Michael, who never cared much for botany, at no period was less disposed to give himself trouble about it than now; his master, friend, and patron was gone, as he thought; he was left in a strange country; he knew not at word of the language, nor was he acquainted with one person in Marseilles, for we had not yet stirred out of the lazaretto. What became of the seeds for a time I believe neither he nor I knew; but, when he saw my recovery advancing, fear of reproof led him to conceal his former negligence. He could neither read nor write, so that the only thing he could do was to put the first seed that came to hand in the first envelope, either in parchment or paper, that had writing upon the back of it, and, thus selected, the seeds came into the hands of M. de Jussieu at Paris. By this operation of Michael, the verbascum became an aromatic herb growing on the highest mountains, and the bauhinia acuminata became an acacia vera.