I'm only a little local botanist, quite
unknown outside my own circle; I only mean that I'm a great
lover of botany."
I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great
man's life, and found some very curious things in it. He was
a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, also a great botanist, who
succeeded the still greater Dillenius as Sherardian Professor
of Botany at Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six
years, and during that time he delivered one lecture, which
was a failure. John, if he did not suck in botany with his
mother's milk, took it quite early from his father, and on
leaving the University went abroad to continue his studies.
Eventually he went to Greece, inflamed with the ambition to
identify all the plants mentioned by Dioscorides. Then he set
about writing his Flora Graeca; but he had a rough time of it
travelling about in that rude land, and falling ill he had to
leave his work undone. When nearing his end he came to Bath,
like so many other afflicted ones, only to die, and he was
very properly buried in the abbey. In his will he left an
estate the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the
completion of his work, which was to be in ten folio volumes,
with one hundred plates in each. This was done and the work
finished forty-four years after his death, when thirty copies
were issued to the patient subscribers at two hundred and
forty guineas a copy.
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