i8 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



to have been one of the first keepers of the new 

 physic garden, but for his death just after his 

 appointment to the post. His name survives in 

 the hardy spiderwort of our perennial borders as 

 well as in Tradescantia zebrina, of which the hand- 

 some varieties now common in our greenhouses 

 would then have been beyond imagination. 



Amongst other visitors came John Evelyn, then 

 eager about his own collection, to study trees and 

 attend the botanical lectures, lately initiated; and 

 we may find it on record that on his first visit 

 in 1654, tne sensitive plant, familiar enough now 

 to most intelligent schoolboys, was shown as one 

 of the living wonders of the physic garden. 



But Linnseus was probably the most illustrious 

 pilgrim of them all, for during that memorable 

 sojourn in England when the great Swedish botan- 

 ist knelt on the sod to give thanks for the beauty 

 of the golden gorse, he found his way, naturally 

 enough, to Oxford. Dillenius, another celebrity 

 of the time, and a German by birth, was then 

 Sherardian Professor of Botany. It might be 

 wished but this by the way that a stronger ele- 

 ment of English learning had pervaded the earlier 

 years of the physic garden. It is curious, though 

 strongly indicative of the indifference to the sub- 

 ject which had hitherto prevailed, to note the re- 

 currence of foreign names amongst its first keepers 

 and professors. Linnaeus, though still a young 

 man, had already thought out and made known 

 his new system of classification of plants, which 

 did not at once meet with unreserved approval 

 from older botanists, perhaps on account of its 



