M. J. Berkeley, W. Sherard, C. G. Daubeny 251 



in country parsonages. But there are other centres of 

 activity in England, though none of them, till the re-awakening 

 of science at the end of the nineteenth century, produced 

 men of very outstanding talent. 



We have seen that Morison was the first Professor of 

 Botany at Oxford he was appointed Professor in 1669 

 although when he was appointed the Botanic Garden at 

 Oxford had already been in being for thirty-seven years. 

 His successors, however, were people of comparatively little 

 importance ; the Professorship was always very inadequately 

 endowed. In 1728 William Sherard (1659-1728), who was 

 more of a patron of science than a man of science, left by 

 will a sum to re-endow the Professorship, which was now 

 named after him, and this was at first occupied by the German 

 Dillenius (1687-1747), who was undoubtedly one of the great 

 botanists in Great Britain during the eighteenth century; 

 but his work, though painstaking and laborious, showed little 

 originality and insight. His knowledge, however, was great, 

 and was recognized by his contemporaries at the time. 

 Perhaps his greatest work was the " Historia Muscorum," 

 which appeared in 1741. As Professor Green says, "it is 

 a work of colossal labour, but it is impossible to avoid a 

 certain feeling of disappointment with the " Historia," not that 

 it was not good but that it might have been so much better." 

 Dillenius was, however, conservative in his thought, and a 

 man without a great faculty for new enterprise. After his 

 death, botany again fell under a cloud at Oxford, and for 

 a time at any rate Cambridge took the lead. 



One must, however, mention Sibthorp (1758-1796), who, 

 always impressed with the relation of his science to agri- 

 culture, founded the Professorship of Rural Economy which 

 now bears his name. 



In 1834 the School of Botany at Oxford woke up. Pro- 

 fessor Charles Giles Daubeny (1795-1867) of Magdalen College 

 was, as men of science were in those days, very versatile, he 

 was almost equally distinguished as a geologist^ a chemist, 

 and a botanist. And again, after the manner of those times, 

 he did not hesitate to hold contemporaneously three pro- 

 fessorships. For in 1822 he became Professor of Chemistry, 

 and only resigned it in 1855, and in 1834 Sherardian Professor 



