Cultivation of Botany i?i England. 359 



to biiilcl, at an expense of 50001. The erection of the gate by 

 Neklaus Stone, for which Inigo Jones furnished the design, 

 cost 500/. On either side of the entrance to the garden stands 

 a statue; one of king Charles the First, and the other of his 

 son Charles the Second: these were purchased with the amount 

 of a fine, laid on the celebrated antiquarian Anthony a Wood, 

 as a punishment for a satire which this good old man had ven- 

 tured to publish in the first edition of the Athence Oxo?iie?ises, 

 against the Earl of Clarendon. This garden had originally 

 been the burial-place of the Jews, who lived in great numbers 

 at Oxford, till the noted banishment and destruction of these 

 state creditoi's in the reign of Edward the First, 1290. It was 

 afterwards enlarged, and at present includes five acres. This 

 addition of ground was however but a trifling improvement, 

 and the danger of inundation to which it is exposed both in 

 winter and summer still exists. The water frequently stands 

 knee-deep above the plants ; and as the lower parts of the gar- 

 den cannot be sufficiently I'aised v^ithout an immense expense, 

 these portions are left quite uncultivated. The active gai-- 

 dener, who is a Scotchman named Baxtei', devotes his atten- 

 tion chiefly to the Cryptogamia ; partly from mortification at 

 finding it impossible to make the garden such as he could 

 wish. He is preparing a Flora Cryptogainica of the environs 

 of Oxford ; and he showed us the first number of this work, 

 containing specimens vei'y neatly laid out, to which we must in- 

 vite the attention of our countrymen in Germany. Mr. Baxter 

 also cultivates with zeal the English Willows, having a hving 

 individual of almost every species, in a proper Salicctum. To 

 the Grasses, likewise, he gives much attention ; and, from the 

 experience of several years, he is enabled to decide that Agro- 

 stis verticilluta, vulgaris, dccuinhens, fasciadata (Curt.), and 

 stolonifcra, are distinct sjiecies ; which, when subjected to the 

 same culture for a great length of time, still continue to pre- 

 serve their characteristic marks. This industrious man, — with 

 the assistance of three persons, each of whom receives two 

 shillings per day, — cultivates between four and five thousand 

 species of plants in the wretched houses of this garden, tliough 

 in fact there is only one stove, properly so called, and this is 

 much too small. Those which grow in the open air are, like 

 the plants of Cambridge, arranged agreeably to the Linna^an 

 method, and se])arated into the indigenous and foreign kinds; 

 and both of these are again divided into annual, biennial, and 

 perennial, by which the study of the allied species becomes dif- 

 ficult. They are partly cullivaled in beds, partly in separate 

 stjuares; without any view to the elicct which this must na- 

 turally offer to the eye. 



Althoui-h 



