PROCEEOINGS OF SOCIETIES, 27 



matologists. But this very different pursuit did not interrupt 

 Sutherland in the zealous discharge of his official duties. So must 

 vre infer from the fact, that in a few years he had collected 2000 

 species of living plants in the garden, and was able to publish, when 

 he had been only seven years in office, his ' Hortus Medicus Edin- 

 burgensis,' being a catalogue, with various annexed details, of all the 

 plants cultivated in the garden. Sutherland also taught botany to 

 students. Contemporaneously, indeed, with the conversion of the 

 Trinity Hospital Garden into the Physic Garden under his charge, the 

 town Council passed a resolution founding a ' Profession of Botany ' 

 in the University, and appointing him its first occupant. Professor 

 Dalzell, however, in his ' History of the TJniversity,' says Suther- 

 land did not become 'properly professor 'till 1695. I must leave it 

 to my colleague, Dr. Balfour, to discover the cause of this hitch in 

 the history of his chair. Sir Robert Sibbald is silent on the subject, 

 and Dalzell merely states the bald fact. But that the case stood as 

 Dalzell puts it seems highly probable ; inasmuch as in I680, seven 

 years after the date of the Town Council's resolution in Sutherland's 

 favour, he takes in the title page of his catalogue no other official 

 designation than that of ' Intendant of the said garden ; ' he so 

 s'yled himself likewise in his dedication to Lord Provost Drummond ; 

 and in the copyright of his book, granted by the Privy Council of 

 Scotland, he is called 'Botanist and Overseer of the Physic Garden,' 

 bat not professor. It is probable, therefore, that some underhand 

 opposition was long successfully made to his induction into his pro- 

 fessorship. I hope Dr. Balfou" may be able to disinter some history 

 of Sutherland's garden, which continued to be the Physic Garden of 

 the city and University for eighty-eight years. All I have now to 

 say of it may be comprised in a very few words. It is probable that 

 we might trace the introduction of many foreign plants, now 

 familiarly met with everywhere in Scotland, to the zeal of Sir 

 Andrew Balfour and Sutherland, and to the Physic Garden as their 

 first Scottish habitat. Por example, the larch appears in Sutherland's 

 catalogue ; and I am not aware that it has been recorded as having 

 been anywhere cultivated by any Scottish proprietor till long after 

 that date. But the species which has principally caught my eye in 

 the catalogue is our common yew, Taxus baccata. Now we know 

 from tradition that there is a yew-tree in the present garden, im- 

 mediately behind Linnseus's monument, which was transplanted from 

 the last Botanic Garden, and which was transplanted thither from 

 the old Physic Garden 112 years ago. But the officials of that day 

 would undoubtedly transplant preferentially their largest or oldest 

 yew ; and this would carry back the age of our specimen to at least 

 193 years, or probably a good many years more ; for Sutherland in 

 1683 would scarcely catalogue a tree merely in its veriest infancy. 

 The conclusion thus come to corresponds with the inference to be 

 drawn from the present girth of the tree and De Candolle's obser- 

 vations on the rate of growth of the yew. Our tree is 5ft. 6 in. at 

 the ground, and nowhere less than 5 ft. 3 in. girth. De Candolle's 

 rule, of 24 annual layers for every inch of radius, gives about 245 

 years for its age. It is, so as far as I know, the only living 

 representative of the original Physic Garden ; and as such I 



