Our story has hitherto been confined to the narrative of the efforts of individuals, who, though in some cases aided by private patronage, received no encouragement from public institutions. Turner and Gerard had their private gardens, and we have incidentally mentioned those of other lovers of the science, but it was not till the year 1632 that any public recognition of the utility of botany was made. In that year, by the munificence of Henry, Earl of Danby, the Physic Garden of Oxford was founded. His lordship gave five acres of ground, built greenhouses and stoves, and a house for the superintendent, endowed the establishment, and placed at its head Jacob Bobart, a German, from Brunswick, who lived-as Antony Wood tells us. -in the garden-house, and died there on February 4th, 1679. Several of the Continental universities had long before, in the concluding years of the sixteenth century, established these indispensable adjuncts to the promotion of the science. Bobart drew up and published, in 1648, at Oxford, an alphabetical catalogue of the plants, which contained about 1,600 species, the English species being about 600. The copiousness of this catalogue, Dr. Pulteney thinks, sets the zeal and diligence of Bobart in a very favourable light. Under his care and that of his son, the Oxford garden continued to flourish for many years. The catalogue was republished in a much improved state by the joint assistance of Dr. Stephens, Mr. William Browne, and the two Bobarts, in 1658. Browne was a Fellow of Magdalen, who died in 1678, and is buried in the chapel of the college. Though this catalogue is interesting in an antiquarian point of view, Dr. Pulteney observes that English botany seems to have received little or no accession by it; there are many dubious and ill-ascertained plants mentioned, and those marked as new are almost wholly varieties; there is not one indigenous plant mentioned for the first time. This catalogue is usually cited as the "Hortus Oxoniensis."

The interval between the date of Parkinson's "Theatrum" (1640), and the publications of Ray and Morison, is not marked by any names of prominent note; still there are some which we can hardly overlook in our sketch.

Pulteney reminds us that up to this period there had been no attempt in England to separate the indigenous from exotic botany. Johnson, it is true, had published (as we have pointed out) local catalogues of plants in certain districts, but no one had essayed a general list or description of English plants alone,

in the way we now call a Flora, a term which, as far as I can ascertain, says the doctor, was first adopted by Simon Pauli for a catalogue of the plants of Denmark, published in 1648. It is to Dr. How that we owe the first sketch of a work of this kind; and though he does not entitle his book Flora, he yet mentions the term in his preface.

WILLIAM HOW

was born in London in 1619, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford. He took the degree of B.A. in 1641, and that of M.A. in 1645, and adopted the profession of physic. Though he is styled Dr. How, it does not appear that he ever took that degree. Like many other scholars of the day he espoused the Royal cause, and was promoted to the command of a troop of horse. On the overthrow of the King's cause he resumed his medical practice, and resided first in Lawrence Lane and afterwards in Milk Street, Cheapside. He died in September, 1656, and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, leaving behind him, says Antony Wood, "a choice library of books of his faculty, and the character of a noted herbalist." How's chief work is his "Phytologia Britannica, natales exhibens indigenarum Stirpium spontè emergentium," Lond., 1650, 12mo, pp. 133. The plants are arranged alphabetically in their Latin names, with one or two synonyms taken from various continental writers as well as from Gerard, Lobel, and Parkinson. The place of growth is noticed, and the particular localities of rare plants specified. In all the list consists of 1,220 plants-a copious catalogue for that time, even admitting the varieties which would be rejected at the present day. "The author of this little volume," says Pulteney, "was unquestionably a man of very considerable learning, and had a strong passion for the knowledge of plants, but his situation in life does not seem to have allowed him the opportunity of travelling into the various parts of England to gratify his taste in English botany, with which he was not critically and extensively acquainted." It is not surprising, then, that many errors should have been discovered by Ray in our author's book. How was assisted by many lovers of botany in different parts of the country, some of whom had been already mentioned by Johnson and Parkinson in the prefaces to their great works. Lobel had meditated a very large work, which was to have borne the title Pulteney, vol. i., p. 169.

of "Illustrationes Plantarum," but he did not live to finish it. Some of his papers fell into the hands of Parkinson, who incorporated them in his "Theatrum." The rest came into the possession of Dr. How, who published them in a fragment entitled "Matthia de Lobel, M.D., botanographi regii eximii, Stirpium Illustrationes, plurimas elaborantes inauditas plantas subreptitiis Joh. Parkinsoni rhapsodiis (ex codice MS. insalutato) sparsim gravatæ, ejusdem adjecta sunt ad calcem Theatri Botanici ἁμαρτήματα. Accurante Guil. How, Anglo." London, 1655, 4to. pp. 170. This work contains the descriptions of many grasses and other plants newly discovered or lately introduced. Of the grasses, many here recorded were first discovered by Lobel. Lobel's preface is very severe in censuring Gerard, and is full of bitter complaints against the booksellers. Pulteney says Lobel may justly be accused of disingenuous and uncandid conduct towards Gerard, whom, when living, he had treated with the appearance of friendship and esteem, and of whose abilities and zeal he had spoken in the highest terms. His editor, Dr. How, too, speaks of Parkinson in very contemptuous language, and represents him as having made Lobel's observations his own without acknowledgment. The attack is uncandid, as Parkinson in the very title of his "Theatrum" professes to have made use of and inserted Lobel's notes. "In fact," adds Dr. Pulteney, "there is a petulance and acrimony in the style both of the author and of the editor (Lobel and How) of this work, which, howsoever exampled in the last age, is happily much less frequently the language of literature in the present."

English botany is indebted to two men, whose name we will now mention, for the introduction of a great number of exotics, though perhaps not for the discovery or illustration of indigenous plants. The name of

JOHN TRADESCANT

(father and son) is that of two naturalists to whom we owe the first museum or collection of specimens of natural history, coins, medals, and "rarities" ever formed in this country. As botanists, too, their name stands too high not to demand an honourable notice, as their famous garden at Lambeth contributed much to the love and improvement of the sciencc.

Though it has been generally supposed (on the authority of Antony Wood) that John Tradescant the elder was a Dutchman by birth, recent researches have rendered it probable that

he was really an Englishman. From the fact of his name not occurring in Gerard's Herbal of 1597, but being frequently mentioned in Johnson's edition of Gerard, (1633,) it was thought he was not resident in England at the former period, and had arrived in the interval. There has been much interesting information afforded to us in "Notes and Queries" relative to the Tradescants, and from that source we learn that John Tradescant was certainly resident at Meopham in Kent in 1608, as there is in the parish register the entry of the baptism of his son John on August 3rd of that year; and the will of John Tradescant, the younger, mentions the Tradescants of Walberswick in Suffolk, in a way that would imply that they were his kinsmen as well as namesakes. Early in life he had travelled in Europe and Asia, and he occupied some position in the suite of Sir Dudley Digges, ambassador to Russia in 1618. In 1620 he was in a fleet that was sent against the Algerines, and mention is made of his collecting plants in Barbary and on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Dr. Pulteney says he was for a considerable time in the service of the Lord Treasurer Salisbury and Lord Wotton. In 1629 he obtained the title of Gardener to King Charles I. He died in 1638. In the Ashmolean books (now in the Bodleian,) there is preserved a folio manuscript, entitled "Tradescant's Orchard, illustrated in sixty-five coloured drawings of fruits, exhibiting various kinds of the apple, cherry, damson, date, gooseberry, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, grapes, hazel-nuts, quince, strawberry, with the times of their ripening," which is supposed to be in the elder Tradescant's handwriting.'

year.

He

John Tradescant the younger was born in 1608, and baptized at Meopham, in Kent, on the 3rd of August in that made a voyage to Virginia in the early part of his life, and brought home many new plants. He inherited his father's love of natural history, and the two collected the museum abovementioned, which was called Tradescant's Ark. In 1656 he published a catalogue of his rarities under the title of "Museum Tradescantianum: or a Collection of Rarities preserved at SouthLambeth nere London by John Tradescant." This is a description of his father's collection, which had been greatly augmented by his own exertions. By the list of benefactors at the end of this little volume, it would seem that the museum attracted the curiosity of the age, and was much frequented by the great, by

whose means it was also much enlarged. Among the benefactors occur the names of the King and Queen and many of the nobility. Prefixed to the volume are two portraits of the Tradescants, father and son, which, from the fact of their being by Hollar and the likenesses of these remarkable men, are much sought after by print-collectors, and consequently very scarce.

The younger Tradescant was intimate with most of the celebrated men of his time; and in 1650 became acquainted with a gentleman whose connection with the name of Tradescant does not increase our respect for his fair fame-namely Mr. Elias Ashmole. Ashmole and his wife lived in Tradescant's house during the summer of 1652. The following we will extract from the English Cyclopædia, by which we are informed that the result of Mr. Ashmole's summer visit was so close a friendship, that Tradescant, by a deed of gift, dated December 15, 1657, made over his museum of natural history to Ashmole, the gift to take effect after his death. He died April 22, 1662, leaving a will in which his museum was bequeathed to his wife Hester Tradescant during her life and after her decease to the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, to which of them she shall think fit.' No mention is made of Ashmole in this will, but that zealous antiquary was little disposed to forego his claim to the closet of rarities.' Accordingly we find this entry in his 'Diary,' about a month after Tradescant's death: "May 30, 1662. This Easter term I preferred a bill in Chancery against Mrs. Tradescant for the rarities her husband had settled on me.' From the documents of this chancery suit (which Dr. Hamel of St. Petersburg, who had become interested in the history of the Tradescants, and with rare patience investigated the obscure portions of it, has in a visit to England succeeded in examining) it appears that Ashmole was unable to produce the deed of gift, which he avers Mrs. Tradescant, to whom he entrusted it, had 'burned or otherwise destroyed;' and Mrs. Tradescant, on the other hand, without apparently denying that such a deed had been executed, pleaded that by her husband's will, dated May 4, 1661, all previous dispositions of his property were annulled, and the museum left expressly to her alone, with the stipulation already mentioned, which she intended to fulfil by bequeathing it to the University of Oxford. The Lord Chancellor (Clarendon) in his judgment set aside the bequest, and gave effect to the asserted terms of the deed of gift, adjudging Ashmole to 'have and enjoy' the entire contents of the museum, 'subject to the