Handbook to the Ferns of British India, Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula (1892)

S$250.00

Handbook to the Ferns of British India, Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula (1892)

S$250.00

Title: Handbook to the Ferns of British India, Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula

Author: Colonel R. H. Beddome

Publisher: Thacker, Spink, and Co., Calcutta, 1892.

Condition: Hardcover, cloth. Very good. Previous owner’s plate on endpaper, showing the book to have been owned by Noel Lothian, a prominent Australian horticulturist. Tanning to endpapers and edges. 500pp, with a 110-page supplement. App 8″ by 5.5″.

A comprehensive book, with numerous black-and-white line illustrations, arranged according to the orders, tribes, and genera of ferns. The book previously belonged to Noel Lothian, an Australian botanist who was awarded an OBE for his services in horticulture.

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Colonel Richard Henry Beddome (11 May 1830 – 23 February 1911) was a British military officer and naturalist in India, who became chief conservator of the Madras Forest Department. In the mid-19th century, he extensively surveyed several remote and then-unexplored hill ranges in Sri Lanka and south India, including those in the Eastern Ghats such as Yelandur, Kollegal, Shevaroy Hills, Yelagiri, Nallamala Hills, Visakhapatnam hills, and the Western Ghats such as Nilgiri hills, Anaimalai hills, Agasthyamalai Hills and Kudremukh. He described many species of plants, amphibians, and reptiles from southern India and Sri Lanka, and several species from this region described by others bear his name.

About the previous owner (from Wikipedia):

Lothian was born on 25 December 1915 in the Melbourne, suburb of Mont Albert. After completing school, he studied at Burnley Horticultural College. He worked in botanical gardens in Melbourne and at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens in New Zealand, then started study at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1938. Lothian was an exchange student at the Munich Botanic Garden when the Second World War broke out. After returning to the United Kingdom to complete studies at Kew Gardens, he joined the Australian Army and managed farms in New Guinea.

After the war, Lothian studied and lectured at the Lincoln Agricultural College in New Zealand. In 1948 he was appointed director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden, a position he held until 1980. While there, he was a prominent member of the Royal Society and chairman of its offshoot, the Field Naturalists Society for several years. In 1961 he was awarded an OBE for services to horticulture, and in 1975 the Veitch Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. He died on 24 September 2004 in Townsville, Queensland.

The standard author abbreviation Lothian is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.