James Drummond (botanist) - Collecting For Mangles

Collecting For Mangles

In July 1835, James Mangles wrote to George Fletcher Moore to ask him to help Mangles obtain seeds and plants of Western Australian flora. Moore responded by purchasing a hundred packets of different kinds of seeds from Drummond's son Johnston, who had developed a taste for botanical collecting from his father. Moore sent the seeds to Mangles, and later that year Mangles sent Moore two cases of rare and useful plants, asking Moore to return the cases filled with Western Australian plants. As Moore doubted his ability to rear the plants given to him, and did not have time to collect plants to return to Mangles, he passed both tasks on to James Drummond, writing to Mangles to introduce Drummond and recommend him as a botanist and collector. Aware of Drummond's financial difficulties, he agreed to bear the cost of sending the boxes to Mangles.

In September 1835, Drummond sent a letter to Mangles, in which he included the seeds of a number of species that he had collected when exploring the Helena Valley. He also enclosed three samples of soil from different parts of his grant, and asked Mangles to arrange a scientific analysis of them. He also asked Mangles to help him get orders for seeds and specimens.

The first box of specimens sent by Drummond contained orchid tubers, although Drummond doubted they would survive the trip. None of them survived, and all of the seeds were destroyed by insect larvae. Mangles responded with a request for more specimens, and sent Drummond a hortus siccus for Drummond to mount pressed plants in. He agreed to take orders and dispose of seeds and specimens on Drummond's behalf, and enclosed an order from the English botanist John Lindley. However he also sent a frank letter to his cousin, Stirling's wife Ellen, in which he must have expressed frustration with Drummond, as Ellen Stirling responded with the observation that his letter was "a very long one but abusing poor old Drummond occupied so large a portion of it that no room for any other subject". By the same ship, Mangles sent a box of plants addressed to Ellen Stirling, but these were claimed by Drummond. Ellen Stirling disputed the matter, and the two had an angry argument that concluded with Drummond taking half. Ellen Stirling later wrote to Mangles, saying that Drummond was getting "old and stupid and appears only desirous to promote his own views".

The ship that carried Mangles letters and plants to Western Australia arrived in September 1837, and Drummond sent another box of orchid tubers and some dried, pressed plants with it on its return to England. The orchid tubers were again destroyed, but the pressed plants arrived intact. Mangles lent them to John Lindley, who described a number of new species from them, thus establishing Drummond's reputation as a botanical collector.

Drummond continued to collect for Mangles, putting together a large collection of living plants for him. He also made a number of collections of pressed plants and seeds for Mangles to sell on Drummond's behalf, of which one was to be given to Mangles. He dispatched these collection on the Joshua Carroll in September 1838. Meanwhile, Mangles had tired of Drummond's "commercial attitude towards botany" (Hasluck, 1955), and had begun to receive the outstanding collections of Georgiana Molloy. Shortly after the Joshua Carroll sailed, Drummond received a letter from Mangles in which Mangles declined to dispose of his specimens. On receiving Drummond's collections, Mangles passed them on to Lindley, who had offered to dispose of them for Drummond. The collections were divided into sets and sold by George Bentham, but it was many years before Drummond eventually received payment.