Fortune

Fortune, ROBERT, a botanist and traveller in China, was born in the county of Berwick in 1813. After serving an apprenticeship as a gardener, he obtained employment in the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, and afterwards in the gardens at Chiswick. His real life-work began, however, in 1843, with the first of his journeys to China, on behalf of the Botanical Society of London. The results of this journey, the fruits of his observation of the flora of the country, its tea and cotton culture, appeared in 1847 in Three Years' Wanderings in Northern China. He subsequently visited China on three separate occasions, to study the methods of tea-cultivation, to carry plants from that country to India, and to collect seeds and plants for the government of the United States. Yedo and Peking (1863) was written after his fifth and last journey to the East. His other two books are A Journey to the Tea Countries of China (1852), and A Residence among the Chinese (1857). Fortune was for a few years director of the Botanical Gardens at Chelsea. He died 16th April 1880.