1915] 



HILL BOTANIC GARDENS 197 



was who brought out the improved and enlarged edition of 

 Gerard's 'Herball' in 1638. The garden of John Parkinson 

 (1567-1650), apothecary to James I, and King's Herbalist in 

 Long Acre, and that of John Tradescant (died 1638) the 

 elder, at Lambeth, are also worthy of particular mention. 



John Tradescant, his father and his son were all of them 

 botanists, collectors, and travellers. Tradescant the elder, 

 who was gardener to various noblemen and also to Queen 

 Elizabeth, was appointed Gardener to Charles I and founded 

 a garden at Lambeth. This garden, after that of Gerard, was 

 probably the most important early botanic or physic garden 

 in England, and a catalogue of the plants therein was pub- 

 lished in the 'Museum Tradescantianum ' by his son in 1656. 

 In addition to the garden, the Museum is worthy of notice in 

 passing, since the curiosities it contained were bequeathed by 

 the younger Tradescant to Mr. Ashmole, and formed the 

 nucleus of the collection in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. 1 



Parkinson was created King's Herbarist, "Botanicus regius 

 primarius, ' ' by Charles I. He was a horticulturist rather than 

 a pure botanist, and his well-known book on garden plants, 

 'Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris,' published in 1629, 

 probably did much to stimulate interest in the cultivation of 

 new and rare ornamental plants. Parkinson it was who had 

 the boldness to depict the Garden of Eden on the title 

 page of his 'Paradisus,' and includes among other remark- 

 able products, the "Vegetable Lamb," a pineapple, and an 



opuntia, the two latter plants being, as far as we are aware, 

 unknown in the Eastern Hemisphere before the discovery of 



America. 



Reference need only be made in passing to garden illus- 

 trations from 1580 and onwards, and to such works as the 

 'Hortus Floridus' of Crispian de Passe, published in Hol- 

 land in 1614, and to the numerous herbals that were being 



produced to show the great strides that had been made in 



horticulture and botany in Elizabethan and early Stuart times. 



The establishment of a botanic garden in Oxford in the 



year 1621, the nineteenth year of the reign of James I, is an 



1 See Johnson, G. W. History of English gardening p. 98. London, 1829. 



