vi Historic NOTICE. 
Thus in the early years of the eighteenth century there were 
in Edinburgh no less than three distinct Botanic or Physic 
Gardens—one at Holyrood, the Royal Garden ; one around 
Trinity Hospital, the Town’s Garden ; and one beside the 
College, the College Garden. All these were at first under the 
care of James Sutherland. 
Sutherland from the first made use of the Royal Garden for 
giving “instruction in Botany to the Lieges,” and received a royal 
warrant appointing him Botanist to the King in Scotland, and 
empowering him to “set up a Profession of Botany ” in this 
Garden. When the Town’s Garden was created the Town 
Council appointed him to lecture on Botany as Professor in the 
Town’s College, now the University of Edinburgh. In 1683 he 
published his “ Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis, or a Catalogue 
of the Plants in the Physical Garden at Edinburgh,” from which 
and from other published notices of the Town’s Garden we learn 
that between two and three thousand plants were in cultivation. 
There is no means of determining how these plants were 
distributed between the several Gardens at the date of publica- 
tion of Sutherland’s catalogue. 
In 1706 Sutherland resigned the care of the Town’s Garden 
and the College Garden as well as his Professorship in the 
University, but, remaining King’s Botanist, he retained the care 
of the Royal Garden at Holyrood. Charles Preston was 
appointed his successor by the Town Council, and there were 
thus established rival Gardens and rival Professors of Botany in 
Edinburgh. Charles Preston died in 1712, and was succeeded 
in his offices by his brother George Preston, Neither of the 
Prestons had ever the care of the Royal Garden. 
In 1715 Sutherland died, and his successor as King’s Botanist, 
Keeper of the Royal Garden, and Regius Professor of Botany 
was William Arthur, who, however, probably through becoming 
implicated in an unsuccessful Jacobite plot to seize the Castle, 
did not hold the offices long, and was succeeded in 1716 by 
Charles Alston (1683-1760). 
In 1724 the College Garden, having fallen into disorder, was 
turned to other uses; and in 1729, George Preston having 
retired, the Town Council appointed, as his successor in the 
charge of the Town’s Garden and as Professor of Botany in the 
