192 



PHILLIP MILLER, was born in 1691- His father as 

 is stated by Professor Martyn, Dr. Plunket, &c- was Gar- 

 dener to the Apothecaries' Company at their Garden at Chel- 

 sea, and the subject of this notice succeeded him in that em- 

 ployment in 1722- IVIillerwas precisely the man of which Horti- 

 culture at the period in which he lived was in need. Exotics 

 were pourino,- in from every clime under the patronage of a 

 general taste for their acquisition, and the scientific researches 

 and directions of Sloane, Sherard, Catesby, &c ; Hot-Houses 

 and Conservatories were multiplying, and their inhabitants 

 accumulating- to a hitherto unheard of extent, and to manage 

 these constructions, and their sensitive inhabitants, required 

 judgment and science which but few Gardeners then possesed. 

 Practical skill and Botanical science were united in Miller, and 

 some of his contemporaries, as Fairchild, Gordon, Knowlton, 

 and others, but as he exceeded them in knowledge, so did he 

 in the benefit he conferred upon Gardening by the suffusion 

 of his acquirements through the Horticultural community in 

 his publications. Mr Louden, on the authority of Watts, a 

 nurseryman at Acton, who worked under Miller, asserts that 

 his father was a Market Gardener near Deptford or Greenwich, 

 and that Miller himself,had a small Florist's Garden somewhere 

 about the spot covered by the King's Bench Prison, South- 

 wark- Being considered an ingenious Florist, when Sir H. 

 Sloane gave the scite of their Garden to the Apothecaries' 

 Company, they appointed him Gardener. It would seem there 

 is no evidence but the assertion of Professor Martyn, to sup- 

 port the statement that Miller's father was his predecessor in 

 the office* 



Miller was attached by long habit to the Botanic arrange- 

 ments of Ray and Tournfort, and it was not until the seventh 

 edition of his Dictionary appeared, that, overcome by the ar- 



* Field's Hist, of Chelsea Gardens, — Encyclopedia of Gardening, p. JlOS. 



