



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Plant Hunters, by Captain Mayne Reid.

The Plant Hunters--by Captain Mayne Reid



CHAPTER ONE.

THE PLANT-HUNTER.

"A Plant-Hunter! what is that?

"We have heard of fox-hunters, of deer-hunters, of bear and
buffalo-hunters, of lion-hunters, and of `boy-hunters;' of a
plant-hunter never.

"Stay!  Truffles are plants.  Dogs are used in finding them; and the
collector of these is termed a truffle-hunter.  Perhaps this is what the
Captain means?"

No, my boy reader.  Something very different from that.  My plant-hunter
is no fungus-digger.  His occupation is of a nobler kind than
contributing merely to the capricious palate of the gourmand.  To his
labours the whole civilised world is indebted--yourself among the rest.
Yes, you owe him gratitude for many a bright joy.  For the varied sheen
of your garden you are indebted to him.  The gorgeous dahlia that nods
over the flower-bed--the brilliant peony that sparkles on the parterre--
the lovely camelia that greets you in the greenhouse,--the kalmias, the
azaleas, the rhododendrons, the starry jessamines, the gerania, and a
thousand other floral beauties, are, one and all of them, the gifts of
the plant-hunter.  By his agency England--cold cloudy England--has
become a garden of flowers, more varied in species and brighter in bloom
than those that blossomed in the famed valley of Cashmere.  Many of the
noble trees that lend grace to our English landscape,--most of the
beautiful shrubs that adorn our villas, and gladden the prospect from
our cottage-windows, are the produce of his industry.  But for him, many
fruits, and vegetables, and roots, and berries, that garnish your table
at dinner and dessert, you might never have tasted.  But for him these
delicacies might never have reached your lips.  A good word, then, for
the plant-hunter!

And now, boy reader, in all seriousness I shall tell you what I mean by
a "plant-hunter."  I mean a person who devotes all his time and labour
to the collection of rare plants and flowers--in short, one who makes
this occupation his _profession_.  These are not simply "botanists"--
though botanical knowledge they must needs possess--but, rather, what
has hitherto been termed "botanical collectors."

Though these men may not stand high in the eyes of the scientific
world--though the closet-systematist may affect to underrate their
calling, I dare boldly affirm that the humblest of their class has done
more service to the human race than even the great Linnaeus himself.
They are, indeed, the botanists of true value, who have not only
imparted to us a knowledge of the world's vegetation, but have brought
its rarest forms before our very eyes--have placed its brightest flowers
under our very noses, as it were--flowers, that but for them had been
still "blushing unseen," and "wasting their sweetness on the desert
air."

My young reader, do not imagine that I have any desire to underrate the
merits of the scientific botanist.  No, nothing of the sort.  I am only
desirous of bringing into the foreground a class of men whose services
in my opinion the world has not yet sufficiently acknowledged--I mean
the botanical collectors--the _plant-hunters_.

It is just possible that you never dreamt of the existence of such a
profession or calling, and yet from the earliest historic times there
have been men who followed it.  There were plant-collectors in the days
of Pliny, who furnished the gardens of Herculaneum and Pompeii; there
were plant-collectors employed by the wealthy mandarins of China, by the
royal sybarites of Delhi and Cashmere, at a time when our semi-barbarous
ancestors were contented with the wild flowers of their native woods.
But even in England the calling of the plant-hunter is far from being
one of recent origin.  It dates as early as the discovery and
colonisation of America; and the names of the Tradescants, the Bartrams,
and the Catesbys--true plant-hunters--are among the most respected in
the botanical world.  To them we are indebted for our tulip-trees, our
magnolias, our maples, our robinias, our western _platanus_, and a