Loudon, JOHN CLAUDIUS

Loudon, JOHN CLAUDIUS, a distinguished botanist and horticulturist, born April 8, 1783, at Cambuslang, in Lanarkshire. He became a gardener, and in 1803 published Observations on Laying out Public Squares, and in 1805 a Treatise on Hothouses; later he wrote, with an ardour that neither ill-health nor poor circumstances could abate, a long series of books on botany, mostly of a somewhat popular character, which have contributed much to extend a knowledge of that science and a taste for horticulture. Amongst these are the Encyclopædia of Gardening (1822), and of Agriculture (1825); the Greenhouse Companion (1825); the Encyclopædia of Plants (1829), and the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (8 vols. 1838), containing a very full account of the trees and shrubs, indigenous or introduced, growing in the open air in Britain. This last is his greatest work; but the expense attending the publication, owing chiefly to the number of plates, involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He died at Bayswater, December 14, 1843. Loudon established four different magazines, which he edited simultaneously with his Arboretum. In his work he was greatly aided by his accomplished and devoted wife.