i8 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



Thus the study of plants was identified with" medicine 

 * by inveterate tradition; and when, in the sixteenth 

 century, with the beginnings of modern botany, the 

 chief cities of Europe established gardens for study, 

 they were called Physic Gardens." 



The first of these public physic gardens appears to 

 have been founded at Padua in the year ij&i; this 

 was quickly followed by similar institutions at Zurich, 

 at Bologna, and at Cologne. In England Dr. William 

 Turner, " the Father of British botany," had a physic 

 garden at his Deanery at Wells and another at Kew, 

 while he also seems to have had the direction of the 

 Duke of Somerset's garden at Sion House. Dear old 

 Gerarde, whose quaint and curious Herbal is the 

 delight alike of the botanist and of the lover of 

 English literature, had a fine physic garden at Hoi- 

 born, where he cultivated " near eleven hundred sorts 

 of plants of foreign and domestic growth." Physic 

 gardens were also established at Oxford and Edin- 

 burgh; and in the year 1673, owing in a great 

 measure to the influence and liberality of Sir Hans 

 Sloane, the friend of Ray, the famous garden at 

 Chelsea was founded by the Company of Apothe- 

 caries. 



These physic gardens were of great utility in pro- 

 moting the study of botany and of medicine throughout 

 Europe. But as the knowledge of science increased, 

 the gulf between the vocation of the physician and of 

 the herbalist grew wider. " It was a severance," says 

 Professor Earle, in his interesting introduction to 

 English Plant Names, "of the popular from the 

 scientific; and it went on widening as botany grew 

 stronger and more conscious of its vocation, while the 

 herbal sank ever lower in cant and charlatanry. These 



