CHAPTER XIII.

Correspondence of Mr. Roscoe and Sir J. E. Smith.

A FEW letters of Mr. Coke of Norfolk are also inserted in this chapter,-a name which it is impossible to mention without a wish to do some justice to the feelings it inspires; but this might seem like adulation, yet fall short of the truth: it is not therefore sufficient, but it may be expedient, only to remark, that Mr. Coke's friendship for Sir James began from the year in which the latter became an inhabitant of the same county, and was perpetuated in annual and perennial acts of kindness during the remainder of Sir James's life.

Of a character so well known as Mr. Roscoe, it is unnecessary to say more than that Sir James's first acquaintance with this distinguished person had its origin in a request imparted to the latter to give a course of botanical lectures at Liverpool in 1803, upon which occasion a mutual esteem was formed: it cannot be said to have grown between them, for it arrived at its full strength and stature in so short a period, that time was unnecessary to the development of a friendship which proved as durable as it was decided at the first acquaintance.

The following letter to Dawson Turner, Esq., describes the impression which this visit made upon Sir James:

My dear Friend,

Allerton Hall, July 16, 1803.

At length I sit down to write you a letter,-literally, but not, I fear, metaphorically, with the pen of a Roscoe, that very pen which has just been correcting his manuscript Life of Leo X.

I am here at his charming villa, six miles from Liverpool, looking over Cheshire and the Mersey to the Welsh hills.

Our friend Hugh Davies travelled with Drake and me in the mail to Chester; our ride and voyage thence were delightful *.

My lectures are numerously and brilliantly attended, and seem to stir up a great taste and ardour for botany. The botanic garden promises well, though in its infancy, except the stove, which is well filled, and in the first order. The curator, Mr. Shepherd, is the properest man I ever saw for the purpose. I hope to procure him some useful correspondents, one of which shall be our friend Watts of Ashill.

You are acquainted with Mr. Roscoe's taste and genius; his manners, temper, and character are equal to them. I am surprised to find him so good

In a letter written about the same time to his sister, Mrs Martin, Sir James informs her "that he had been to dine with Mr. Roscoe at his country house, quite retired, in a most beautiful situation, with fine views over

'Cheshire and Lancashire both,'

(Do you remember the old ballad of Childe Waters ?) Wales, the Mersey, &c. I felt as if I were with Lorenzo de' Medici at his villa; for of all the men I ever knew, Mr. Roscoe most surpasses my expectations."

a practical botanist. His library is rich in botany, and especially in Italian history and poetry. I fancy myself at Lorenzo's own villa. I expect my friend Caldwell from Dublin every day, and have some hopes of Mr. Griffiths coming to see me. Two Miss Gleggs, very fine girls, his neighbours, have lately been here: one of them is a botanist, and we have had some rambles together.

The most interesting place I have seen, in itself, is Mr. Blundell's, of Ince,-rich in a profusion of antique sculptures, pictures, and marbles. We had much entertaining talk about Italy, as he has often been there.

I just saw my old friend Broussonet for a few days he touched at London in his way from Teneriffe to France. He is going to be professor of botany at Montpellier.

Yours most truly,

J. E. SMITH.

As a botanist, Mr. Roscoe is distinguished for having thrown the best light upon the Scitaminea, a splendid tribe of plants, previously but little understood," a very natural and important order, the eighth among the Fragmenta of Linnæus, and equivalent to the Canne of Jussieu. Its name alludes to the aromatic qualities of most of the species, and particularly to the use made of some of them in cookery or in medicine,―scitamentum being expressive of anything rendered grateful to the palate by seasoning or other preparation. Accordingly the Ginger, Turmeric, Zedoary, and various sorts of

Cardamoms, belong to this order. It stands between the Orchidee and Spathacea.

"The genera referred to this order by Linnæus are Musa, Heliconia, Thalia, Maranta, Globba, Costus, Alpinia, Amomum, Curcuma, Kampferia, Canna, Renealmia, and Myrosma.

"The order of Scitamineæ, including the Cannea, coming at the very threshold of the Linnæan artificial system, and being in themselves very attractive, curious, and rare, have particularly engaged the attention of several distinguished botanists, but with very unequal success. No plants have been less understood by Linnæus and his immediate followers, with regard to their genera, and the principles upon which they ought to be founded.

"Professor Swartz, who has so well illustrated the Orchidea, and whose attention was called to the Scitamined by their near affinity to that tribe, has not thrown any light on their generic distribution. The French botanists have done absolutely nothing to clear up this family, but have adopted the ideas and all the mistakes of Linnæus.

"The most unfortunate attempt relative to the genera of Scitaminee was made by Giseke, in his edition of the lectures of Linnæus upon the natural orders of plants, printed at Hamburgh in 1792. This writer, working with other people's materials, and destitute of practical experience, boldly undertook to new-model the whole order. But as Gulliver's mathematical tailor of Laputa, having made a mistake in the beginning of his calculation, brought him home a whole waggon-load of clothes,

so Giseke, setting out on erroneous principles, has presented us with a rumbling waggon-load of new hard-named genera, dismembering the old ones, not only by insufficient characters, but by characters that do not exist, and establishing new ones with as little scruple or success.

"Mr. Roscoe first suggested a method of reducing the genera of the Scitaminee to regular order, by essential characters derived from the structure of the stamen, particularly its filament.

"This principle is found to be the only one which, while it is clear and precise in defining technical essential characters, leads to the establishment of natural genera.

"It must be observed, that the learned author of the Prodr. Nov. Holl. (Mr. R. Brown,) follows the hypothesis of Jussieu in not allowing a corolla to these plants, inasmuch as they are monocotyledonous.

"Mr. Roscoe's ideas of a Scitaminean flower are exactly consonant with Mr. Brown's, except that he considers the inner perianth of the Thalia as a corolla with a double limb, which is the most obviously natural mode of considering it, and in which I without hesitation concur.

"The Scitamine as well as the Cannea are properly placed in the Monandria Monogynia of the Linnæan sexual system." (See Sir J. E. Smith's article Scitamineæ in Rees's Cyclopædia.)

In one of the latest letters addressed to Mr. Roscoe by Sir James, in 1827, he congratulates him on the