W.T. Blanford, an accomplished naturalist, but hitherto he had given no more than casual attention to the vegetable kingdom- Howbeit it was not possible that one so susceptible of beauty in nature should remain in- different to the marvels of the Sino-Himalayan flora; wherefore, little as Elwes may have been conscious of it at the time, the impressions received during this year of travel proved the source of his valuable services to botany and horticulture in years to come. Not until after his marriage in 1871, when he took up house at Miserden, some five miles from his father’s mansion of Colesborne, did he give any attention to the cultiva¬ tion of a garden. Even then he had not the means for employing a trained gardener; it was an old Quaker in his neighbourhood who by precept and example aroused his interest in the collection and care of plants.
Of Elwes’s travels in many lands, collecting butterflies, and plants, shooting big game and paying close attention to other forms of life, especi¬ ally birds, much information will be found in the following pages, and I will only refer to the last of these expeditions as affording a typical instance of his extraordinary vitality and energy. Having received in 1913 a special invitation to visit Nepal, a realm which had long been almost hermetically sealed against Europeans, he was preparing for a start when he became disabled by a painful disorder, rendering a serious operation necessary. After that was over, I visited him in a nursing home, and expressed a hope that all was going well. “Oh, well enough, well enough," quoth he; u but you see they had to cut through three or four inches of fat to get at the trouble, and that makes recovery slow.”
Slow! That was in the second week of December, and he sailed for India in January. Those who listened to his lecture before the Royal Society of Arts in February, 1915, giving account of his experience in Nepal, well understood that he had not spared himself as a convalescent. Elwes was a ready linguist and had acquired enough fluency in Hindustani to converse with his bearers, who became devoted to him.
The enterprise and diligence of collectors during the last forty years have resulted in the introduction to this country of a greater number and variety of hardy exotics than in any similar space of time. In no genus have so many new species been discovered, described, and cultivated as in that of Rhododendron. Had Colesborne been situated on the greensand or in some sheltered dale of the west, one may imagine the enthusiasm with which Elwes would have undertaken their cultivation; but his lines were cast on a Cotswold upland, where a cold, cretaceous soil forbids success with that fascinating family of plants, and he knew better than to attempt it. Perhaps horticultural science lost nothing from the limitations imposed on the cultivator by oölitic rock, which caused him to concentrate attention on plants agreeing with an alkaline soil. The scope of his contributions
