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Professor of Botany at Glasgow University and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Born 1872; died 1965. Plant collector
George Cave trained as a Kew gardener, graduating in 1895. In 1896 he became assistant at the Botanic Gardens, Calcutta and in 1900 was appointed Governor of the Cinchona Plantations, Mungpoo (Bengal). In 1904 he became curator of the Lloyd Botanic Garden, Darjeeling. He went on numerous plant collecting tours in Tibet, Nepal and Sikkim and some diaries from these tours are held by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Sources: Desmond; Rowena Cave, ‘George Cave’s Diary, Sikkim 1906’.
D.W.
Born Fife 1630; died Edinburgh 1694
Brought up at the family seat, Balfour Castle in Fife, Andrew Balfour studied philosophy at St Andrews University graduating MA in about 1650. He spent several years in Paris studying medicine eventually graduating MD at Caen in 1661. Returning to London and having been presented to Charles II he acquired a position as a tutor to the earl of Rochester, accompanying him on a grand tour from 1661 to 1664. During his 15 years abroad Balfour acquired an extensive library of medical and natural history books, together with collections of antiquities, pictures, arms, instruments, plants, animals and fossils. In 1667 he returned to St Andrews, practising as a physician, before moving to Edinburgh to build up a medical practice there; it is claimed that he was the first doctor in Scotland to dissect the human body. In 1670, with his distant cousin and friend Robert Sibbald, he leased land for a small garden at St Anne’s Yards, Holyroodhouse, and later petitioned the town council for a larger plot adjacent to Trinity Hospital, in which were planted 2,000 non-indigenous species. He played a prominent role in Edinburgh’s learned society and opened his private museum collections, gallery and library to scholars. He was knighted in 1682 for his contribution to science and society and was active in establishing professorial chairs and in founding the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, becoming president in 1685. He improved the infirmary and arranged publication of the first ‘Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia’ (1685) to which he contributed parts on materia medica. After his sudden death in the street in 1694 most of his collections were broken up and his library sold.
Sources: DNB; Fletcher and Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; Deni Bown, ‘4 Gardens in One’; (R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists)
D.W.
The Committe for the Study of the Scottish Flora was set up in 1953 to co-ordinate the activities of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh (now the Botanical Society of Scotland) and the B.S.B.I. in Scotland, with each society appointing an equal number of members to the committee. In 1953, B.L. Burtt was appointed its Chairman, and Basil Ribbons its secretary. By 1976 the partnership was under-strain with the Scottish members of the B.S.B.I. eventually voting to replace the C.S.S.F. with the BSBI Committee for Scotland with a BSBI Scottish Newsletter establish to tackle communication problems. (BSBI News 138, April 2018, pp.70-1)
Born Edinburgh 1799: died Glasgow 1868.
George Walker Arnott entered the University of Edinburgh aged 14 and took his MA degree in 1818, having already published learned articles on mathematics. He then studied law but abandoned it (due to a dislike of public speaking) in favour of botany, and in the early 1820s went to France to exchange views and excursions with the great French botanists, for a time working in the Paris herbaria. He became famous for his work on cryptogams. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1825 and in 1828 the genus Arnottia was named after him. Between 1830 and 1840 Arnott worked with Sir William Jackson Hooker building a reputation as a meticulous taxonomist. His descriptions of new plants from South America, India and Senegambia were published in various journals and he co-operated with Robert Wight in his Illustrations of Indian Botany. In 1837 the University of Aberdeen awarded him its LLD and in 1845 he was elected Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University. In 1850 he collaborated with Hooker on the sixth edition of 'British Flora'. At that time he studied and built up a collection of diatoms. Although ‘disinclined’ to publish, his obituary in the Journal of Botany notes that ‘his marvellous letters … to his numerous working correspondents’ made his scientific observations equally useful. He was also an enthusiastic curler and freemason.
Sources: DNB; Desmond's Dictionary; Jnl Bot 1868; Gard Chron 1868
by D.W.
