THE HISTORY OF THE BOTANICAL MAGAZINE XV 
liberally supported the garden, for he presented nearly fifty 
new trees, and materials for a rock garden. Field states 
that Alchorne “ presented about forty tons of old stones 
brought from the tower of London, for the purpose of raising 
an artificial rock to cultivate those plants which delight in 
such a soil, to which was afterwards added a large quantity 
of flints and chalk, given by Mr. John Chandler, and also a 
quantity of lava from a volcano in Iceland, presented by 
Joseph Banks, Esq., which materials being considered fully 
adequate to the purpose, it was undertaken, and the erection 
finished in the course of the summer of 1773.” 
Curtis held the office of Demonstrator of Botany at 
Chelsea for about five years, when his increasing literary 
and other avocations induced him to resign it. He had 
united the studies of botany and entomology—the latter 
especially in relation to agriculture, and he wrote various 
treatises on the subject, but I cannot pause to particularize 
them. Soon after his appointment to Chelsea he commenced 
as a public lecturer on botany and horticulture, his great 
aim being to give a practical turn to his teachings. For this 
purpose he established a botanic garden, first in the Grange 
Road, Bermondsey, then in Lambeth Marsh, and finally at 
Brompton, where he had a ‘‘more salubrious and commo- 
dious spot.’’ The last he continued to cultivate up to his 
death.'' Full particulars of the scope and extent of Curtis’s 
garden are contained in Dr. Thornton’s memoir, from which 
I have already quoted. It was laid out in quarters: one 
being devoted to medical plants, another to poisonous plants, 
a third to culinary plants, and a fourth to British plants, 
and so on. A catalogue of the plants, about 6,000 in 
number, was provided for each subscriber. Seven editions 
of the catalogue were published between 1790 and 1799. 
Curtis’s Lectures on Botany as delivered in the Botanic 
Garden at Lambeth, handsomely illustrated, were published 
y his son-in-law, Samuel Curtis, in 1805, and a second 
edition in 1807. 
Curtis’s literary and artistic activity was very great, but 
I must confine myself to those works bearing on the subject 
under consideration. In 1771 he commenced the Flora 
‘ Thornton states that this was continued and improved by 
Mr. Salisbury after Curtis’s death. This was William Salisbury, the 
author of the Hortus Paddingtonensis, or a catalogue of plants cultivated 
in the garden of J. Symmonds, Esq., of Paddington House, 1797, an 
of several other botanical and horticultural books ; but by no means so 
prominent a person as R, A. Salisbury, who will claim our attention 
urther on, 
