2 BOTANIC GARDENS. 



garden was in existence at the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzer- 

 land, a few kilometres distant from Lake Constance, which con- 

 tained sixteen plots occupied by medicinal plants. A garden of 

 this character was founded in 1309, at Salerno, and another in 

 Venice in 1330. In 1309 the Benedictine monks founded an acad- 

 emy called " Civitas Hippocratica" at Monte Cassino, in Campania, 

 which appears to the writer to be among the earliest, if not the 

 first, school of medicine, and established in connection with it a 

 " physics garden." Two centuries later, courses of lectures on 

 the " simples," as the unmixed preparations of herbs were termed, 

 were given in the greater number of Italian universities, under 

 the title of " lectura simplicium," by the professors of anatomy 



View of tiie Laboratory in the Oxford Botanic Garden. Alter a. photogruph. 



and surgery. It is interesting to note that the laboratory method 

 of handling the course in " cognitio simplicium" was not intro- 

 duced until the establishment of the botanic garden at the Uni- 

 versity of Padua, when, in addition to the ]ectures, exercises in 

 the demonstration of remedial plants growing in the garden were 

 given under the title of " ostencio simplicium." 



The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the f ounda- 

 tion of many gardens in England, France, Germany, Holland, and 

 Sweden, some of which have had a continuous existence to this 

 day. The garden of Bologna was founded in 1568 ; Leyden, 1577 ; 

 Leipsic, 1579; Montpellier, 1596; and Paris in 1597. The last 

 named was organized for the purpose of determination of " what 



