I'm only a little local botanist, quite unknown outside my own circle; I only mean that I'm a great lover of botany." I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great man's life, and found some very curious things in it.

He was a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, also a great botanist, who succeeded the still greater Dillenius as Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six years, and during that time he delivered one lecture, which was a failure.

John, if he did not suck in botany with his mother's milk, took it quite early from his father, and on leaving the University went abroad to continue his studies.

Eventually he went to Greece, inflamed with the ambition to identify all the plants mentioned by Dioscorides.

Then he set about writing his Flora Graeca; but he had a rough time of it travelling about in that rude land, and falling ill he had to leave his work undone.