INTRODUCTION

The Oak Spring Garden Library, a legacy of Rachel Lambert Mellon (1910–2014) and now part of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, contains the archive of John Bradby Blake (1745–1773), a young trader who worked for the British East India Company in the late 1760s and early 1770s in Canton (Guangzhou) and Macau. The archive provides an unusually detailed insight into Bradby Blake's life and botanical work, including his attempts to send living plants back to England. The archive also contains almost 200 pieces of exquisitely detailed early British‐Chinese hybrid botanical art, which Bradby Blake prepared with a Chinese artist, Mauk‐Sow‐U. With their emphasis on botanical detail and careful depiction of the detailed structure of flowers, these illustrations are as accurate as any produced at this relatively early date in the post‐Linnaean development of botanical science.     

THE JOHN BRADBY BLAKE DRAWINGS IN THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM,LONDON: JOSEPH BANKS PUTS THEM TO WORK

In the last quarter of the 18th century, Joseph Banks came into possession of a set of botanically accurate, western‐influenced, drawings of Chinese plants, executed in Canton by a Chinese artist and supervised by John Bradby Blake, an East India Company supercargo. Banks realized that these drawings, now in the Natural History Museum, London, would help his collectors in Canton accurately identify the Chinese species he sought as living plants for the Royal Gardens at Kew. Banks commissioned a collector's manual whose illustrations were based on the Blake drawings. In the early 19th century, William Kerr used this manual (now unfortunately lost) to continue the Blake practice – these drawings are at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. John Reeves, many of whose drawings are at the Royal Horticultural Society, used Kerr's commissions to produce the next generation of botanical art in Canton.     

‘THOROUGHLY CHINESE’: REVEALING THE PLANTS OF THE HONG MERCHANTS' GARDENS THROUGH JOHN BRADBY BLAKE'S PAINTINGS

The paintings in the John Bradby Blake collection should be admired for their sophisticated artistry and accurate depiction of botanical features, but they are also significant because they reveal the diversity of plants grown in the gardens of Chinese in Guangzhou (Canton). They therefore provide a precious insight into a relatively neglected topic in Chinese garden history, namely the cultivation of plants in gardens. This paper identifies one of the gardens from which the plants depicted by John Bradby Blake might have come, and looks at how those plants were used and appreciated in their Chinese context.     

Dr. Auzoux's botanical teaching models and medical education at the universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen

In the 1860s, Dr. Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux introduced a set of papier-mâché teaching models intended for use in the botanical classroom. These botanical models quickly made their way into the educational curricula of institutions around the world. Within these institutions, Auzoux’s models were principally used to fulfil educational goals, but their incorporation into diverse curricula also suggests they were used to implement agendas beyond botanical instruction. This essay examines the various uses and meanings of Dr. Auzoux’s botanical teaching models at the universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen in the nineteenth century. The two main conclusions of this analysis are: (1) investing in prestigious scientific collections was a way for these universities to attract fee-paying students so that better medical accommodation could be provided and (2) models were used to transmit different kinds of botanical knowledge at both universities. The style of botany at the University of Glasgow was offensive and the department there actively embraced and incorporated ideas of the emerging new botany. At Aberdeen, the style of botany was defensive and there was some hesitancy when confronting new botanical ideas.     

JOHN BRADBY BLAKE AND JAMES KERR: HYBRID BOTANICAL ART,CANTON AND BENGAL,c. 1770

The collection of botanical paintings commissioned by John Bradby Blake (1745–1773) from a Chinese artist in Canton c. 1770, is one of the star items in the outstanding collection of botanical books and paintings assembled by Rachel Lambert Mellon and now housed in the library of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. A remarkably similar collection, commissioned from several Indian artists by Dr. James Kerr (1737–1782) in Bengal and Bihar, is now scattered among the collections of the Natural History Museum London, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the New York Botanical Garden. Discussion of the Blake and Kerr collections is preceded by some introductory background to the creation of such art – its hybrid nature, its role in the visual documentation of useful plants in European, Asian and colonial contexts, and the botanical and artistic networks in which the two collections were created.     

CHINESE VISITORS TO 18TH CENTURY BRITAIN AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO ITS CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE

This essay introduces three 18th century Chinese visitors to Britain, analysing the important role they played in cross‐cultural intellectual and artistic contact between the two countries. Loum Kiqua, a merchant, arrived in London in 1756. He gave the first known performance on a Chinese musical instrument in the West. Chitqua, a portrait modeller who arrived in 1769, exhibited at the newly‐established Royal Academy (becoming the first named Chinese artist to have a work shown in an overseas exhibit). Whang at Tong (Whang Atong, Huang Yadong), was only in his early 20s at the time of his arrival in England in August 1774, but he played a significant role in the transfer of botanical knowledge from China to the West through his connections with John Bradby Blake in Canton and his father John Blake in London.     

John Locke’s seed lists: a case study in botanical exchange

This paper gives a detailed analysis of four seed lists in the journals of John Locke. These lists provide a window into a fascinating open network of botanical exchange in the early 1680s which included two of the leading botanists of the day, Pierre Magnol of Montpellier and Jacob Bobart the Younger of Oxford. The provenance and significance of the lists are assessed in relation to the relevant extant herbaria and plant catalogues from the period. The lists and associated correspondence provide the main evidence for Locke’s own important, though modest contribution to early modern botany, a contribution which he would have regarded as a small part of the broader project of constructing a natural history of plants. They also provide a detailed case study of the sort of open and informal network of knowledge exchange in the early modern period that is widely recognised by historians of science, but all too rarely illustrated.     

植物多样性：面临的严重威胁及其保护——第16届国际植物学大会评述

第16届国际植物学大会于1999年8月1日至7日在美国密苏里召开,这是20世纪世界植物学家的最后一次盛会,大约有4500名代表出席了会议。会议围绕生物多样性的保护和利用、21世纪的植物科学等主题展开讨论,主要内容包括6个方面,即植物生物多样性：系统和进化;生态学、环境和保护生物学;结构、发育和细胞生物学;遗传和基因组学;植物生理和生物化学;植物的人类利用：经济植物学和生物技术。本文简要介绍了大会的概况,特别评述了有关植物多样性研究方面的进展,并对我国植物科学发展提出建议。     

TWO BOTANISTS,A FINANCIAL CRISIS AND BRITAIN'S FIRST EMBASSY TO CHINA

This essay reveals a financial dimension to Captain John Blake and his son John Bradby Blake's involvement with China, namely, their participation in financing the Canton trade through predatory loans to Chinese Hong merchants. Widespread predatory lending in Canton led to a financial crisis during the late 1770s, which ruined several British and Chinese merchants. In an effort to recover the money they claimed was owed to them, many British traders, including John Blake, formed a lobby group in London and authorized Britain's first Ambassador to China to negotiate with the Emperor in Beijing on their behalf.     

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinica

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinica is amied at publishing innovative achievements in botanical researches,introducing current trends and innovative theories in botany at home and abroad and discussing the theories and practices of botanical resources and conservancy in order to enhance the development of basic theories and applied innovative techniques in botany and serving economic construction in China.     

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinica

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinica is amied at publishing innovative achievements in botanical researches,introducing current trends and innovative theories in botany at home and abroad and discussing the theories and practices of botanical resources and conservancy in order to enhance the development of basic theories and applied innovative techniques in botany and serving economic construction in China.     

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinca

Acta Botanica Boreali-Occidentalia Sinca is amied at publishing innovative achievements in botanical researches,introducing current trends and innovative theories in botany at home and abroad and discussing the theories and practices of botanical resources and conservancy in order to enhance the development of basic theories and applied innovative techniques in botany and serving economic construction in China.     

Herbals and Other Botanical Works of the Polish Renaissance - Present State and Prospects for Research

Summary

The Polish botanical literature of the Renaissance, comprising herbals and catalogues of plants published in Polish and in Latin, is hardly known outside Poland. Publication of these works was connected with the rise of science at the University of Cracow (Kraków) founded in 1364. Between 1534 and 1613, three herbals came from the Cracow presses: O Zio?ach i mocy Ich (On herbs and their power) by Stefan Falimirz (1st edition, 1534), Herbarz Polski (The Polish Herbal) by Marcin of Urzedów (1595) and Zielnik (The Herbal) by Szymon Syreniusz(1613). Besides, lists of plants occurring in Poland (Schneeberger, 1557; Wigand, 1590; Joannicy, 1616) appeared. Polish botanical literature of the Renaissance comparable with contemporary works such as those of William Turner and John Gerard, included the first floristic records from Poland, ecological notes, information about herbal drugs and also on old Slavonic beliefs about plants. A modern study on the botanical contents of the Renaissance literature should now be undertaken, embracing determination of the plants described by the herbalist, and analysis of the beginnings of scientific botany in Poland. Interdisciplinary studies on the herbals from the point of view of the history of pharmacy, ethnology, linguistics and history of culture are also needed.     

THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN BRADBY BLAKE

John Bradby Blake (1745–1773) first visited Canton as a supercargo for the British East India Company in 1767/68. He returned as a resident supercargo in July 1769. Between then and his untimely death in 1773, in collaboration with one or more Chinese artists, he produced over 150 paintings of Chinese plants, many of which are illustrated in exquisite botanical detail. These paintings and the associated archives in the Oak Spring Garden Library at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) provide a detailed glimpse into an interesting life and a previously little known dimension of the social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese in the late 18th century.     

FOLLOWING THE THREAD TO OAK SPRING: THE AFTERLIFE OF JOHN BRADBY BLAKE'S CANTON DRAWINGS

For more than 175 years, the remarkable botanical drawings made in Canton by a Chinese artist working with the British East India Company supercargo John Bradby Blake, were handed down from generation to generation within the same family. They first appeared publicly in 1959 when the estate of Sir Frederick Cripps of Ampney Park, Gloucestershire, came up for auction. A Bristol art dealer bought the drawings, but on the other side of the Atlantic, Paul Mellon had other ideas for them. This article follows the trail from London, via Ampney Park and Bristol, to Oak Spring, Virginia.     

ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS (1793–1884) AND THE SPREAD OF BOTANY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

Mrs. Phelps was influenced by her older sister Emma Willard, a well known educational reformer, and by Amos Eaton, who helped form her botanical and scientific understanding. Feeling the lack of a suitable botanical textbook particularly for female students who were becoming more prevalant, she wrote, Familiar Lectures on Botany, published in 1829, using her first husband's surname (Lincoln). It quickly became popular and continued to be revised and reprinted through 1869. In 1833, a second botany text for lower level students, Botany for Beginners, appeared. It too, went through many reprintings up to 1891. Mrs. Phelps’ other books and writings on science and education were popular also. The botanical texts were educationally innovative in starting with flower structure using common living examples and integrating morphological and physiological aspects of plants. The Linnaean System was used to classify the “most common native and foreign” plants that were described mainly from Eaton's manuals. Clear figures, often copied from well-known authorities helped to instruct teachers and students. Because of its wide usage, even in later years in competition with the widely used textbooks of Asa Gray and Alphonso Wood, Mrs. Phelps’ books were an important factor in educating many students, especially females, in botany and inducing some of them to have a life-long interest in the science and in teaching it to others. She was, through her writings, a person who helped provide a favorable climate for the developing profession of botany in America.     

INVITED SPECIAL PAPER: History of the botanical teaching laboratory in the United States

The establishment of teaching laboratories for botany in the United States was strongly influenced in the early part of the 19th century by the founding of a laboratory of natural history at the Rensselaer School by Amos Eaton who inspired numerous educators, particularly women. By midcentury and later, botany programs were established at land-grant colleges and the so-called “new Botany” movement spread from them. In the latter part of the century additional changes were brought about by the influence of German laboratory activity and botanists’ reactions to the introduction of the Huxley-Martin biology programs to America. During these times, Americans were improving their own manufactured microscopes, laboratory supplies, and equipment capabilities. By the beginning of the 20th century, laboratory teaching of botanical subjects was widely accepted as normal in universities and colleges, as well as in some high schools.