Observations sur Les Graminees de la Flore Belgique [Agrostographiae Belgicat Tentamen]. [The Winterbottom / Wedgewood /Hubbard copy ] by Dumortier, B.C - 1823

Tournay: J. Casterman, 1823. Illustrated with 16 lithograph plates, small octavo, pp 153,(i), partly untrimmed, the errata leaf pasted to the rear endpaper, the occasional blemish, lacking the front endpaper, but overall rather good internally, original boards, slightly chipped printed paper title label on the spine. From the library of the Kew grass botanist C.E. Hubbard, with both his stamp and his signature on the front enpaper; also with the signature of James Edward Winterbottom, and and the book label of the Allen Wedgewood bequest. [C.E. HUBBARD was the senior grass botanist of the twentieth century. ALLEN WEDGEWOOD was the son of M.L. Wedgewood with whom he collected until his death during the First World War at Gallipoli, aged just 22. M.L. Wedgwood created a herbarium of British plants at Marlborough College (MBH) as a permanent memorial to her son. JAMES WINTERBOTTOM, 1803 - 1854, was a British botanist and traveller. He studied medicine at St John's College, Oxford, qualifying in 1833. He never practised, however, but occupied himself with numerous tours, indulging his passion for natural history, architecture and art. He spent much of 1834-1845 travelling in the U.K. and Europe and then in 1846 left for Asia, exploring India, Java, Singapore, China and Tibet. In the latter region he accompanied Richard Strachey on the Tibetan Boundary Commission. Winterbottom and Strachey's explorations took them to the Rakas-tal and Manasarowar lakes in western Tibet at the end of the 1840s, where they collected many plants, always noting the height at which they were found. They returned to England in 1849 to arrange and work up the collections, which took them two years. Strachey belatedly published an account of the trip in 1900 in the Geographical Journal. The plants they gathered formed an important collection, referred to in Hooker and Thomson's Flora Indica as most valuable. In the period after their return, Winterbottom went back to his residence at Woodhay, Hampshire, where he began forming an arboretum. He was eager to travel once more, however, and made a visit to Ireland in 1852 and then planned a journey to North Africa and the Near East. He proceeded to Egypt and Syria in 1854, but after setting off from there towards Constantinople (Istanbul), he began suffering stomach problems. He died on the island of Rhodes on July 4 that year. His herbarium was obtained by two of his cousins, Mrs Pain and Mrs Gnosspelius, who passed it on to Kew. Winterbottom was a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the Geographical Society.]. First Edition. Boards. Very Good.