APPENDIX A 



NOTE I, PAGE 8 



There had been gardens as schools of horticulture 

 for boys of noble birth, as in Persia, in ancient times. 

 But during the Middle Ages, love of beauty and 

 curiosity rather than a love for accurate knowledge, 

 led the Italians to gather into gardens the new and 

 curious plants which travelers, at the time of the 

 revival of learning, began to bring into Italy from all 

 parts of Europe and Asia (later from America); to 

 plant those mediaeval "observation plots" of which 

 today the Island of Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore is an 

 excellent example, where the tall cedars of Lebanon 

 still flourish as when brought from their native Syria. 

 The thirst for knowledge that seized upon Italy in- 

 creased the number of horticulturists and embryo 

 botanists. In 1525, a wealthy nobleman, one Caspar 

 de Gabriel, laid out a botanical garden on a large 

 scale in Tuscany, and, within a comparatively few 

 decades, all the leading cities of Italy and also many of 

 the universities of France and Spain followed this 

 example. Among the scholars visiting the univer- 

 sities, there were a few who had a definite and earnest 

 purpose in the use of the gardens. They desired a 

 scientific substructure for the crude and chaotic mass 

 of facts, observations and records then called botany. 

 But the general interest in the mediaeval "observation 



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