Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/342

316 GEORGE DIONYSIUS EHRET. In the current number of the Proceediiu/s of the Linnean Society, Miss Barton gives a translation of the autobiography of Ehret, which is preserved in the Botanical Department of the British Museum. It is a very interesting document, and incidentally corrects some of the particulars given in the brief accounts of this eminent artist hitherto published — the Dictionary of National Biograj^hy, for ex- ample, gives both the date and place of his birth incorrectly, in which latter error it is followed by the Biograpldad Index of British Botanists, where "Heidelberg" should be substituted for "Erfurt." His father and mother were poor folk who supported themselves by the produce of their garden, and Ehret was taken from school early and apprenticed to his uncle, a gardener near Darmstadt. Here he kept up the practice of drawing, which he had learnt from his father, and was later employed in the Margrave's garden at Oarlsruhe. After a few years he took service with Weinmann at Regensburg, and executed for him about 500 drawings. Weinmann seems to have treated him badly ; he then obtained other work.