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registered July 6, 1626, decided that “un Jardin royal” should 
be planned and established by “le sieur Hérouard,” a leading 
physician, “to contain all kinds of medicinal herbs . . . and for 
the instruction of the students of the University of Medicine.” It 
was first called “Le Jardin du Roi,’ then “Jardin Royal des 
Plantes Medicinales.” Since 1635 it has been popularly known 
as the “ Jardin des Plantes.” 
“The National Museum of Natural History, known under the 
popular name of Jardin des Plantes, is an Institution of Higher 
Education comprising nineteen chairs for instruction in the natural 
sciences,” including Botany, Zoology, Physiology, Anthropology, 
Chemistry, and Geology. This is perhaps the first, and still almost 
if not quite a unique instance of official recognition of a botanic 
garden as essentially a museum (or in this case a subdivision of 
a museum). 
In an address delivered August 16, 1882, M. Alphonse Lavallée, 
president of the Société Nationale d’Horticulture de France, spoke 
as follows: “ The beginning of the seventeenth century seems to 
be the true starting point of our horticulture. The creation of the 
Jardin des Plantes was realized in 1626, but our great Establish- 
ment of Natural Science was neither completed nor opened to the 
public until 7634, as Deleuze has proved. Six years later the first 
course of lectures was given. Guy de la Brosse, in his pamphlet, 
‘The Opening of the Royal Garden,’ shows that the other Euro- 
pean gardens were at that time very small in comparison to that 
of Paris.” 
Loudon (Encyclopedia of Gardening, London, 1865, p. 99) 
says: “The Jardin des Plantes was founded by Louis XIII, in 
1610, and finished in 1634." (Gardener’s Chronicle, 20 N. S.: 
623. 7 July, 1883.) 
The date 1635 is the year given on our questionnaire returned 
by the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. 
Directors: 
Herouard (1626- ) 
Guy de la Brosse (1635-1641) 
The official Guide names the following as 
‘ 
‘among his suc- 
cessors ”: Fagon, whose administration was long and happy; 
