54 Parkes on the Use 



home so many new plants, that he could enumerate 1 ,356 dis- 

 tinct species, without including any of those which he had col- 

 lected in his former travels. 



The learned throughout Europe were proud of these achieve- 

 ments, and Tournefort was considered to be one of the greatest 

 ornaments of France. In England, however, we had the excel- 

 lent and eminent John Ray, a man whom we had equal reason to 

 value and admire, who indeed rather preceded Tournefort, and 

 was equally assiduous in his endeavours to promote the know- 

 ledge of plants. In consequence of the exertions of this great 

 man, and of the methodical arrangements which he had formed 

 of the vegetable kingdom, together with the subsequent labours 

 of Boerhaave, Linnaeus, Hudson, and others, botany, about the 

 middle of the last century, assumed a distinguished rank 

 among the sciences of Europe. 



Such are the fruits of industry, when directed by taste and 

 by the energies of an enlarged mind ; but the discovery and 

 arrangement of new plants were not the only benefits that 

 were achieved by the exertions of a succession of great men, 

 all directed to the attainment of one important object; for 

 with the knowledge of plants, the want of gardens increased*; 

 and as these became more common, the public gradually ac- 

 quired a taste for planting, until the desire of possessing a 

 garden became general throughout Europe. 



The changes which this produced in society were many and 

 important ; and, I have no doubt that, a person now travelling 

 through Europe, and making this one of the objects of his in- 

 quiry, would find the character of each people more or less 

 favourable, according to the degree in which a taste for garden- 

 ing prevails among them. Were I asked to enumerate the 



* I am aware that there were gardens in Great Britain before the Nor- 

 man Conquest, belonging to the monks, but the inhabitants in general had 

 not this useful luxury. There were also large vineyards here in the 12th 

 century. William of Malmesbury says, that the grapes produced in the 

 vale of Gloucester were of the sweetest taste, and made most excellent 

 wines, but these were likewise the property of the great barons, the monks, 

 and abbots : for the general inhabitants of the country participated neither 

 in the credit nor profit which was attached to these establishments. 



