282 THE EDINBURGH PROFESSORS 



and to provide for practical teaching in another Botanic 

 Garden belonging to the town. Sutherland was appointed to 

 the Professorship and also to take charge of this new Town 

 Garden, which, it may interest those who at the present day pass 

 through the Waverley Railway Station to know, occupied a 

 portion of the site of that station. Both these gardens were 

 at some distance from the University, and apparently to save 

 the time of the University students, perhaps also to create a 

 teaching garden entirely within the jurisdiction of the College 

 authorities, another portion of ground occupying a part of the 

 Kirk o' Field, notorious as the place of Darnley's murder, was 

 transformed into a herb-garden. Thus within a few years from 

 the beginning of the movement for the providing of adequate 

 facilities to students for learning about plants, three Botanic 

 Gardens were made available. 



During Sutherland's tenure of the Professorship teaching 

 was given by him in these different gardens. It would appear, 

 however, that Sutherland was at heart a numismatist, and 

 whilst during the early period of his incumbency of office 

 he had corresponded with many botanical institutions abroad, 

 had introduced to the gardens new species of plants many of 

 them now established in the flora and had published in 1683 

 a Catalogtie of tJie plants in the Physical Garden^ in later years 

 his interest was centred in coins and medals. So great was 

 the obsession that the patrons of the University, dissatisfied 

 with his botany, compelled him to resign his Chair in 1706, 

 to which they appointed Charles Preston, but Sutherland re- 

 tained, until he retired in 1/15, charge of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden at Holyrood, of which by Royal Warrant he had been 

 made Keeper with the additional personal recognition of Botanist 

 to the King in Scotland. Thus the increase in number of 

 gardens extended to the Professors, and from 1706 onwards to 

 1739 there were two rival Botanical Schools in Edinburgh- 

 that of the Royal Garden, and that of the University. 



Sutherland's place in relation to the development of scientific 

 Botany in Scotland is that of pioneer in the teaching of 

 systematic Botany from the living plants in relation to Materia 

 Medica, and of first custodian and cultivator of plants for 



