SE I 'ENTEEN TH CEX 77 'A' ) '. 203 



in any stiff clay, and tilling it with earth taken from a bog 

 . . of this sort, in our garden here in Oxford, we have 

 one artificially made by Bobart, for the preservation of Boggy 

 plants, where being sometimes watered, they thrive for a 

 year or two as well as in their natural places." A catalogue 

 of the garden, which contained some 1600 species and varieties, 

 was published by Bobart in 1648. Of these nearly six hundred 

 were native plants. The catalogue is a tiny book, and no 

 space is given to describe the fiowers. It is merely a list 

 of names, the first part Latin-English, the second English- 

 Latin, The list contains among trees " Abies mas," " male 

 Firretree," " Arbutus," " Strawberry tree," " Arbor Judae," 

 "Judas tree," "Ash tree," &c. Among the flowers are about 

 twenty sorts of Roses, including " York and Lancaster, 

 Provence, Austrian and Cinnamon, 11 violas, 9 clematis, 7 

 Colchicum and g crocus, double and single peony, 4 foxgloves, 

 10 Lychnis, Campian, Bee orchis, orchis serapius," &c. The 

 list also contains " Nicotiana, English Tabacca," " Yucca, 

 Indian Bread," " Stinging nettle," and 4 sorts of moss, " cup, 

 club, hard sea, and tree mosse."* The plant names follow 

 each other in alphabetical order, quite regardless of any 

 classification. The first attempt to separate indigenous from 

 foreign plants was made by \\'illiam How, in his work entitled 

 Phytologia Britannica (1650). 



Although this is not a history of the progress of Botany, that 

 science is so intimately connected with gardening, that some 

 references to it cannot be left out, for how could the immense 

 number of plants now cultivated, be understood or identified, if 

 it were not for systematic classification ? The two great pioneers 

 in this work are John Ray and Robert Morison. Their relative 

 merit has been the subject of some discussion. Both began to 

 work out a system about the same time. Ray gave an outline of 

 his classification in 1668, in the tables in Bishop ^^'ilkins's Real or 

 Universal Character. Morison's first ideas are embodied in his 



* A second and enlarged edition was published in 1658, with the 



co-operation of PhiHp Stephens and William Brown, both botanists of 



Oxford. It is a great improvement on the first, and makes frequent 

 reference to Gerard and Parkinson. 



