Natural History is rather uncertain. It is not unlikely that a 

 taste for collecting natural curiosities first arose out of the 

 circumstance of so many different animal and vegetable sub- 

 stances having been got together for medical purposes at an age 

 when all the kingdoms of nature were alike ransacked to find 

 ingredients for the nostrums then in vogue. The more rare any 

 thing was, and even sometimes the more nauseous and revolting 

 in regard of the source whence it was derived — the more it was 

 valued for its supposed occult virtues in the healing of diseases. 

 Hence the study of Natural History, so far as it was studied at 

 all, to a certain extent came to be associated with that of 

 medicine, and it is remarkable how many of the older naturalists 

 in this country, more especially botanists, or herbalists as they 

 M'ere not unfrequently called, were medical men. The contents 

 of the Apothecary's shop seem to have furnished the first nucleus 

 for a ^luseum ; as in like manner the garden of simples grew uj> 

 into what was afterAvards termed the Physic Garden, this latter 

 giving rise to our modern Botanic Gai'dens. Thus the gardens 

 at Chelsea, founded by the Company of Apothecaries, in London, 

 in 1673, were foiTQcrly so called. The same name of Physic 

 Garden was, within the memory of many now living, given to 

 the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, it being for the more especial 

 use of medical students. The same in the cases of the gardens at 

 Oxford and Edinburgh. 



We remember Shakspeare's description of the Apothecary, 



" in whose needy shop the tortoise hung, 

 An alligator stuff'd, and other skins 

 Of ill-shaped fishes, and about his shelves 

 A beggarly account of empty boxes, 

 Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds. 

 Remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses, 

 Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show." 



Borneo and JtUiel. 



This description was probably characteristic of the age in which 

 Shakspeare lived, and a taste for amassing such curiosities may 



