io THE USES OF PLANTS. 



sent him specimens from almost every corner of the 

 globe then known, down to our own time, British 

 naval and commercial enterprise, and that love of 

 travel for its own sake that forms one of our most 

 marked national characteristics, have been adding 

 to our knowledge of the uses of plants. Our old- 

 established Botanical Gardens have long carefully 

 collected those species that have been used in medi- 

 cine. The Physic Garden of Oxford, founded by the 

 Earl of Danby in 1632, was the first. In 1690 the 

 gardens at Hampton Court were placed by William 

 and Mary under the charge of the botanist Plukenet 

 (1642-1706), who sent collectors abroad ; and about 

 the same date Sloane presented the garden at Chelsea, 

 afterwards rendered famous by the encyclopaedic 

 works of Philip Miller (1691-1771), to the Society of 

 Apothecaries. In 1760 the Botanic Garden at Kew 

 was established by the Princess of Wales, under the 

 advice of Lord Bute (1713-1792), who was an en- 

 thusiastic botanist ; and some notion of the assiduity 

 with which plants were gathered together by special 

 collectors during the reign of George III. (mainly 

 through the efforts of Sir Joseph Banks, 1743-1820) 

 may be formed from the fact that the second edition 

 of the ' Hortus Kewensis,' published in 1813, enu- 

 merates 9,800 species, as against 5,500 in the edition 

 of 1789. Cook's voyages, on one of which he was ac- 

 companied by Banks, the discovery of the new world 

 of Australasia, and its further exploration by Flinders, 

 Robert Brown, and Ferdinand Bauer, added enormously 

 to our knowledge of the plants of the world. Bauer, 

 the artist, died in 1826; but Brown survived until 



