1915] 



HILL BOTANIC GARDENS 191 



the true state of the knowledge of the more competent medical 

 botanists of the period. The herbal of Brunfels (1530), with 

 its beautiful and accurate illustrations but indifferent text, 

 and those of Bock, Fuchs, Cordus, and many others, may be 

 taken as evidence of the rapid advance that was taking place 

 in the knowledge of plants, though the fabulous and mythical 

 still found adherents even amongst the most learned. 



Private physic gardens, as distinct from the monastic herb- 

 aries, existed towards the end of the fifteenth century, and 

 some of these developed into municipal gardens for the grow- 

 ing of " simples." The botanic garden at Padua, which ap- 

 pears to have been one of the earliest of these gardens, was 

 founded in 1545 on the exact spot which it now occupies near 

 the church of S. Antonio and S. Giustino. The garden owes its 

 origin to the sound suggestion put forward at the end of the 

 year 1542 by Francesco Bonafede, who in 1533 had founded 

 the chair of "simples" (Lectura Simplicium) — the first in 

 Europe — at the University of Padua. 



This garden is of especial interest, as not only have we an 

 excellent account of it written by de Visiani, 1 but also because 

 it is preserved very largely in its original condition. The cir- 

 cular wall by which it is enclosed, though not the original one 

 built in 1551, occupies the same site, and was rebuilt between 

 1700 and 1707; within the wall the garden is laid out in 

 numerous little beds with stone edgings. The garden under- 

 went many vicissitudes and fell into considerable decay, 

 but in the year 1837 it was thoroughly restored, and the 

 arrangement of the beds may well be a restoration of the 

 original condition of the garden. In any case it affords an 

 excellent example of the type of geometrical garden illus- 

 trated in horticultural books published at the end of the 

 sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, 2 which 

 for so long a time dominated garden design on the Continent. 



1 de Visiani, It. Dell' origine ed anzianita dell' orto botanico di Padova. 

 Padua, 1839. Saccardo, P. A. L'orto botanico di Padova nel 1895. pi. 1-8. f. 1. 



Padua, 1895. 



* See illustrations of the gardens of De Vries, 1580-1583, reproduced by Sir F. 

 Crisp in 'Illustrations of some mediaeval gardens,' 1914; and cf. Mariani, Flori- 

 legium renovatum et auctum. Frankfurt, 1641. 



