THE HISTORY AND FUNCTIONS OF BOTANIC 



GARDENS 



ARTHUR W. HILL, M.A., F.L.S. 

 Assistant Director, Royal Botanio Gardens, Kew 



There are three things which have stimulated men through- 

 out the ages to travel far and wide over the surface of the 

 globe, and these are gold, spices and drugs. It is to the two 

 latter of these universal needs of man that we may trace 

 the origin and foundation of botanic gardens. 



The value of spices has led to the foundation of more than 

 one botanic garden in the tropics, while to the necessity for 

 drugs must be attributed the formation of the earliest 

 botanic gardens in Europe. 



Before entering more fully into the history of the found- 

 ing of the various botanic gardens it may be pointed out that 

 progress in the science of botany and the establishment of 

 gardens were by no means contemporaneous. To the Greeks, 

 for instance, we owe the foundation of our knowledge of the 

 classification of plants, and these early botanists were assidu- 

 ous in collecting plants from all available sources and in 

 drawing up accurate descriptions. 



Little interest, however, would appear to have been 

 aroused in them to cultivate the plants they so carefully de- 

 scribed, and the only record we have of the existence of any- 

 thing of the nature of a botanic garden is the mention of 

 Aristotle's Garden at Athens which he bequeathed to Theo- 

 phrastus, by whom it was newly equipped and improved. 



Prior to the interest displayed by the Greeks in the vegeta- 

 tion of the earth and quite independent of their influence we 

 find evidence of the formation of gardens in Egypt, Assyria, 

 China, and subsequently in Mexico — gardens not strictly 

 botanic in our more modern sense but enclosures 1 set apart 



1 See Greene, E. L. Landmarks of botanical history. Smithsonian Misc. Coll. 

 54 x :pp. 56-57. 1909. No doubt Theophrastus (370-286 or 262 B. C.) gained 

 his intimate knowledge of plants very largely from the specimens cultivated in 



this early Athenian garden. 



Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard., "Vol. 2, 1915 



(185) 



