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.