INTRODUCTION 13 



titioners, supplying the Physicians, Apothecaries and who else 

 shall have occasion for things of that nature with what is right 

 and true, fresh and good for the Service of Health and Life." 



Bobart was compelled to resign his Professorship in or 

 shortly before March, 1719, according to a letter of Consul 

 W. Sherard, by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Skippen, Principal 

 of B.N.C., and he died shortly after on December 28 

 following, aged seventy-eight.* "They ought to have let him 

 spend the short remainder of his time in the Garden " 

 (Sherard, Letter of July 8). How frequent such cases are ! 



Of his two immediate successors, Edwyn Sandys, D.M. 

 of Wadham College, and Gilbert Trowe, D.M. of Merton, 

 nothing particular is recorded ; but in the year 1728 the whole 

 establishment was placed upon an improved footing, and its 

 permanence more effectually secured, through the munificence 

 of Dr. William Sherard.t 



This distinguished patron of botanical science was born in 

 1658, and after passing through Merchant Taylors' School, 

 entered at St. John's College, Oxford, 1677, and afterwards 

 became a Fellow of that society. He travelled much on the 

 continent, chiefly occupied in collecting plants, and in form- 

 ing connections with the most celebrated foreign botanists of 

 the day, such as Hermann, Boerhaave, and Tournefort. Being 

 appointed consul at Smyrna, he availed himself of the oppor- 



* There is a portrait of him in the Oxford Almanack for 1719. An 

 unfeeling epitaph in Amherst's " Terrae Filius," 1726, affords a suggestion 

 of the pronunciation of his name : 



Here lies Jacob Bobart 

 Nailed up in a cupboard. 



Jacob's brother Tilleman seems to have acted as Keeper of the Garden 

 for some time. He did work for the Government in laying out gardens 

 at Hampton Court and Blenheim Park, where he planted the elm-trees 

 in the same order that the British troops fought against the French at 

 the Battle oi Blenheim. 



f B. D. Jackson has a notice of him in " Journal of Botany " for May, 

 1874. An unnamed portrait in the Botanical Library may be of him. 



