George Simonds Boulger

George Simonds Boulger FLS FGS FRHS (1853–1922) was an English botanist, professor of natural history, and the author, or co-author, of several books.

Quotes

During the last few weeks Dr. Leith Adams, F.R.S., and myself have been exploring an ossiferous cave at Shandon, near here, under a grant from the Royal Irish Academy. Bones of mammoth, reindeer, bear, wolf, horse, and hare, were found in the débris of a quarry here in 1859, and are now in the Royal Museum, Dublin. We have worked through a considerable quantity of limestone breccia and stalagmite, in which and in a thin underlying deposit of cave-earth we have found numerous bones of the above-mentioned animals, indicating at least two individuals of mammoth, eighteen of reindeer, and five of horse, for which latter this is as yet the sole recorded locality in Ireland. The bones of bear show extreme age and signs of disease, and we have found the cast antler of a reindeer. Some of the bones have been gnawed, probably by wolves, and many have been broken by the falling-in of the roof of the cave. Though we have broken into a large chamber, we are as yet unable to form a clear conception of the original form of the cavern. A full account of the cave previous to the present exploration was given by Prof. Harkness in the Geological Magazine for June, 1870.
- (1875) . "Irish Cave Exploration". Nature 12 (298): 212. DOI:10.1038/012212b0. (letter sent from Dungarvan, County Waterford)

The Druids are stated to have burnt their human sacrifices in wicker cages; and, though we cannot with equal confidence vouch for the antiquity of that other more harmless use of the Willow, the making of bats to be wielded at Lord's, or on any other English greensward, even if we forget altogether its many uses in manufactures, we can find many points of interest in the Willows group. It may as well, however, be mentioned here that the wood, especially that of the White Willow (Salix alba L.), is made into paper pulp, besides affording the best charcoal for artists' crayons; whilst, not to mention the undoubted value of the bark for tanning purposes, it is now well known in the medical world as the source of salicine.
- Familiar Trees (2nd, enlarged & revised ed.). Cassell & Company. 1907. p. 25. (1st edition 1888)

Our old-established {[w|Botanical garden|Botanical Gardens}} have long carefully collected those species that have been used in medicine. The Physic Garden of Oxford, founded by the Earl of Danby in 1632, was the first. In 1690 the gardens at Hampton court were placed by William and Mary under the charge of the botanist Plukenet (1642-1706), who sent collectors abroad; and about the same date Sloane presents the garden at Chelsea, afterwards rendered famous by the encyclopedic works of Philip Miller (1691-1771), to the Society of Apothecaries. In 1760 the Botanic Garden at Kew was established by the Princess of Wales, under the advice of Lord Bute (1713-1792). who was an enthusiastic botanist ...
- The Uses of Plants: a Manual of Economic Botany with Special Reference to Vegetable Products Introduced During the Last Fifty Years (1st ed.). London: Roper & Drowley. 1889. p. 10. (224 pages)

Wood does not occur in any plants of a lower grade than ferns; and in the higher plants in which it does occur it is chiefly, but not exclusively, in the stem. The main physiological function of wood is the mechanical one of giving strength to resist the increasing weight of the structure as it grows erect and branches. Submerged aquatic plants, buoyed up, as they are, by the water, do not form wood in their stems, nor, as a rule, do annuals, nor, at first, the succulent, flexible shoots of longer-lived plants. In ferns, even when growing into lofty trees, and in allied plants, the wood, though dense, consists largely of scattered longitudinal strands and often of cells of no great vertical length. Though there are also generally woody layers just below the surface of the stem, giving it considerable strength as a whole, the structure renders tree-ferns useless as timber.
For all practical purposes, therefore, wood is produced only by the highest sub-kingdom of the plant world, the seed-bearing or flowering plants, the Spermatophyta or Phanerogámia of botanists.
- Wood: A Manual of the Natural History and Industrial Applications of the Timbers of Commerce (2nd revised & enlarged ed.). Edward Arnold. 1908. p. 2. (348 pages; 1st edition 1902)

There is, in fact, thirteen times more land north of the equator than there is to the south of it. This alone must obviously have a profound influence on plant-distribution—the vast ocean area being almost exclusively represented so far as plant life is concerned, by Diatoms and Algae; so far few flowering plants, such as the Grass-wracks (Zostera), inhabiting salt water.
- Plant Geography. Temple Cyclopedic primers (1st ed.). London: J.M. Dent & Son. 1912. p. 7.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

George Simonds Boulger