202 GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



learned men and the wealthier citizens, all gave their attention to facilitating 

 the progress of botany. " A ship never left the port of Holland," says 

 Deleuze, " the captain of which was not instructed to procure seeds and 

 plants wherever possible." The most distinguished citizens filled their 

 gardens at great expense and had a pleasure in communicating those plants to 

 the garden at Leyden. This garden in the early eighteenth century con- 

 tained upwards of 6,000 plants. Sir J. E. Smith, who visited the garden in 

 1786, says, " that it has been much enlarged within the last forty years and 

 is now about as large as the Chelsea garden." By 18 14 it appears to have 

 already been much neglected, though it still contained many curious old 

 specimens of exotics, such as Cluyt's palm, twenty feet high and upwards of 

 225 years old, a curious ash and various other trees and shrubs planted by 

 Cluyt. A merchant, Pierre de la Court, had famous gardens at Dreihock, 

 near Leyden, where he was the first to introduce and cultivate with 

 success the pineapple and the tuberose. It was more than fifty years 

 before the example of Leyden was followed in other cities, but by the middle 

 of the seventeenth century Botanic Gardens were established in all the 

 provinces. That of Amsterdam was under the direction of Jan Com- 

 melyn, who did much for the advance of botany and spared neither pains nor 

 money to let the treasures of his garden be known among savants. He was 

 succeeded by his nephew Gaspard, who was the author of Hortus Amstelo- 

 damus, 1678 — a superb collection of engravings of plants, the greater part 

 until then unknown, and derived largely from the Dutch colonies. This 

 volume contains the earliest representation of the sweet pea. Amster- 

 dam was the first garden in Europe that procured a specimen of the coffee 

 tree. A seedling of this tree was sent to Paris in 17 14. Two seedlings 

 from this plant were sent to Martinique in 1726; from them were pro- 

 duced all the coffee trees afterwards cultivated in the French colonies. 

 According to Loudon, the botanic garden at Groningen was begun by Henry 

 Munting, a zealous botanist and man of learning who had spent eight years 

 travelling in the different countries of Europe, establishing correspondence 

 between botanists and cultivators. He spent the greatest part of his fortune 

 upon his garden ; but in 1641 the States of Groningen, thinking so useful an 

 establishment ought to be under the protection of the republic, purchased 

 it and appointed him professor. The catalogue of this garden, published in 

 1646, contained about 1,500 plants. 



