io INTRODUCTION 



his day a practice which was revived two centuries later, 

 with good results to the Garden, and he even advertised his 

 seeds in the papers : 



" Good new St. Foyn Seed may be had at Mr. Jacob 

 Bobart's, at the Physic Garden, in Oxford " (London 

 Gazette, No. 2633, Feb. 5, 1690). 



Nevertheless, the Garden does not seem to have been quite 

 up to the mark as compared with other gardens. It may be 

 that he devoted his energies to literary and professional duties 

 rather than to the Garden, or perhaps he lived during a period 

 unfavourable to vegetation. During the winter of 1682-3 

 there was so great a frost that " oaks, ashes, walnut-trees 

 were miserably split and cleft, so as they might be seen 

 through, and this also with terrible noises, like the explosion 

 of fire-arms, and that the clefts were not only in the bodies, 

 but continued to the larger boughs, roots, etc." * 



Then, too, the Garden was overstocked with shrubs of 

 fanciful forms 



In living trees, 

 Here frowns a vegetable Hercules. TICKELL. 



titled " Vertumnus," 1713, by Dr. Evans, the author of " The Apparition," 

 is a eulogium on him. Vicia bobartia and the Grass genus Bobartia 

 were named after him by Forster and Linnaeus respectively. His 

 Herbarium of about 2,000 specimens is the oldest collection but one 

 of dried plants in the University Herbarium. An amusing anecdote is 

 preserved by Dr. Zachary Grey in his notes upon " Hudibras," i. p. 25 : 



" Mr. Jacob Bobart -did about forty years ago (in 1704) find a dead 

 rat in the Physic Garden, which he made to resemble the common 

 picture of dragons, by altering its head and tail, and thrusting in taper 

 sharp sticks, which distended the skin on each side till it mimicked wings. 

 He let it dry as hard as possible. The learned immediately pronounced 

 it a dragon, and one of them sent an accurate description of it to Dr. 

 Magliabechi, Librarian of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Several fine 

 copies of verses were wrote upon so rare a subject, but at last Mr. Bobart 

 owned the cheat. However it was looked upon as a masterpiece of art ; 

 and as such, deposited in the Museum, or Anatomy School, at Oxford." 



* " Philosophical Transactions," 1683 ; Cater, " Horti Bot. querela." 



