Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/267

 ABBUDA's BRAZILIAN PLANTS. 248 abilities would have caused him to be caressed by a provident Government, when one of this description is establishing itself in an uncultivated but improving country. He showed me some of his drawings, which I thought well executed. I never again had an opportunity of seeing him ; for when I returned from Seara, I had not time to enquire and seek for him, and he died before my second voyage to Pernambuco. He was forming a Flora Pernam- bucana, which he did not live to complete." In the Appendix to his Travels, Koster translated such portions as '*may be interesting to English readers" of Arruda's two pamphlets — '* Disserta9ao sobre as plantas do Brazil, que podem dar linhos proprios para meritos usos da sociedade, e suprir a falta do Canhamo," Rio de Janeiro, 1810, 8vo, pp. 49 (on the fibrous plants of Brazil, which may supply the place of hemp) — and another, published in the same year, but not mentioned by Pritzel, the title of which Koster translates as **An Essay on the utility of establishing gardens in the principal provinces of Brazil for the cultivation of new plants." Pritzel mentions an earlier memoir (Lisbon, 1799) on the cultivation of cotton. Arruda's most important work was Centuria Plantanim Pernam- hucensium, which he did not live to complete. It included a collection of drawings, some of them executed under his direction by Joam Ribeiro (whom Pritzel calls '' Martinus "), to which Arruda sup- plied names and sometimes descriptions. References to these are appended to all the new plants described in the two pamphlets already mentioned ; and some account of them was given in a publication (at Rio) by Allem&o in 1846, consisting of one quarto leaf and plate, and entitled " Apparecimento de uma collec9ao de desenhos do Doutor Manoel Arruda da Camara." Allemao says that the collection had been entrusted to him to publish, and that he was also desirous of printing a memoir of Arruda. The plate and description are of Cochlospennum insiyne, on which Arruda had proposed to form a new genus, Azeredia, in honour of Jose Joaquim de Azeredo Coutinho, Bishop of Pernambuco from 1798 to 1802. Joam Ribeiro Pessoa de Mello Montenegro, who has been referred to above, was professor of drawing in the seminary at Oliiida. Arruda dedicated to him his genus Ribirea (= Hancornia) : ** he is worthy of this honour," he says, *' not only from having attempted to introduce into this captaincy the cultivation of some useful exotic plants, but for the curious and philosophic examination which he has made respecting the wonderful phenomenon of the manner of the fructification of the ynangaheira plant [Haricurnia], which will be found in my Centuria Plant. Pern.'' (Koster, p. 499). He died, according to Pritzel, in 1816. Koster met this priest at Itamaraca, and the account he gives of him (p. 266) is so pleasant that I ven- ture to transcribe it : — ''Among the visitors at the vicarage was Joam Ribeiro Pessoa de Mello Montenegro, professor of drawing to the seminary of Olinda, and the friend and disciple of Dr. Manoel Arruda da Camara. This priest, during his stay at Itamaraca, crossed over to the mainland to say mass at the village of Camboa every Sunday R 2