JOHN CLAUDIUS, a famous writer on horticulture, was the son of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and was born at Cambuslang, in Lanarkshire, in 1783. After attending a public school in Edinburgh, he was apprenticed, at the age of fourteen, to a nurseryman and landscape gardener in that city. Meantime he had become intimate with the theory of horticulture, as well by diligent private study, as by attending the classes of botany, chemistry, and agriculture, in the university. In 1803 he repaired to London, and through the high testimonials which he bore, soon obtained abundance of employment. Bent upon improving the inferior system of agriculture in England, Loudon in 1806 rented, conjointly with his father, a farm in Middlesex, and in the ensuing year published a pamphlet, entitled *An Immediate and Effectual Mode of Raising the Rental of the Landed Property in England*. The success attending his new vocation induced him to take a lease of the larger farm of Tew Park, in Oxfordshire. There he also established an agricultural college. After amassing by his enterprise a fortune of £15,000, he set out, in 1813, on a tour, and having travelled in Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Austria, returned to England in 1814.

The knowledge of foreign horticulture he thus obtained was still further enlarged by a visit to France and Italy in 1819, and formed an important part of his *Encyclopedia of Gardening*, published in 1822, with numerous woodcuts. A second edition of this great work appeared in 1824. Less successful, his elaborate treatise *Arborum et Fruticetum Britannicum*, 1838, was sold slowly, and involved its author in a debt of £10,000 to the printer, the stationer, and the wood-engraver. While toiling assiduously at this work, Loudon was also editing four monthly periodicals—an amount of activity extraordinary in a man whose right arm had been amputated in consequence of disease, and whose constitution had been seriously impaired by rheumatic fever. Enfeebled still more by this labour and its attendant anxiety, he yet continued his studies as unremittingly as ever, and immediately before his death in 1843, was engaged in a work entitled *Self-Instruction for Young Gardeners*. In addition to the works already mentioned, Loudon wrote—

*Observations on the Formation and Management of Useful and Ornamental Plantations*, Svo, Edinburgh, 1804; *A Short Treatise on some Improvements lately made on Hothouses*, Svo, Edinburgh, 1805; *A Treatise on Farming, Managing, and Improving Country Residences*, and on the Choice of Situations*, 2 vol., 4to, London, 1806; *Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs*, *Encyclopedia of Agriculture*, 1825; and *Encyclopedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture*, 1832. He also edited *Encyclopedia of Plants*, 1829.