INTRODUCTION 23 



though at some risk of breaking our necks. Sir J. E. Smith 

 had been so obliging as to give us a letter to his friend, 

 Dr. Williams, Professor of Botany and Librarian to the 

 Radcliffe Library. 



"The danger of inundation to which it is exposed, both in 

 winter and summer, still exists. The water frequently stands 

 knee-deep above the plants ; and as the lower parts of the 

 garden cannot be sufficiently raised without an immense 

 expense, these portions are left quite uncultivated. The 

 active gardener, who is a Scotchman named Baxter, devotes 

 his attention chiefly to the Cryptogamia ; partly from mortifi- 

 cation at finding it impossible to make the garden such as he 

 could wish. . . . Mr. Baxter also cultivates with zeal the 

 English Willows, having a living individual of almost every 

 species, in a proper Salicetum. To the Grasses, likewise, he 

 gives much attention ; . . . This industrious man, with the 

 assistance of three persons, each of whom receives two 

 shillings per day, cultivates between 4,000 and 5,000 species 

 of plants in the wretched houses of this garden, though, in 

 fact, there is only one stove, properly so called, and this is 

 much too small. 



"The Oxford Garden is inadequate to the purposes of 

 botanical instruction in the present state of science." 



A later critic tells us that the Garden had fallen " into bad 

 repute, from the sorry and dilapidated condition of the houses, 

 which its benefactors, a century back, at a time when horti- 

 culture was in its infancy, had provided for the reception of 

 exotics " ; and Dr. Williams must have been fully cognisant 

 of the state of things, for on his death it was found that he 

 had desired his sister and executrix to contribute ^500 3-per- 

 cent. Consols to the Garden Fund. 



His successor, Dr. Daubeny, thus found himself in possession 

 of a nucleus of a fund for the improvement of the Garden, 

 which, by means of a liberal subscription raised in the 

 University, augmented by a contribution from the Radcliffe 



