Another mid-19th C life of adventure. Naturalist on Beechey’s three year pacific voyage, aimed at meeting up with Franklin when he might have discovered the North-West passage, visiting Pacific Islands, Loo Choo, China, Kamchatka and California, collecting plants, and then becoming a missionary in China. George Tradescant Lay went on to be British Consul in Canton, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen), before dying at Amoy in 1845, only 46 years old. Despite such an active life, at his death he was called just an amiable man, and to be frank, there is little personality coming through the accounts of him and his writings.  But he did publish a book on China in 1841, which was also republished after considerable rehashing, and appropriation, with the archaeologist Ephraim Squier in 1843 in America.  An account of Lay’s life and books can be found here.