PEESIDENTIAL ADDBESS. 3 



to think have already won the approbation of biologists 

 both in Europe and America. 



It is fortunate for me that your President is permitted 

 some latitude in his choice of a subject on which to 

 address you, and some freedom in his method of treatment 

 of it. I could scarcely hope to interest you in the detailed 

 anatomical researches to which I have devoted what 

 little time I can spare from professorial duties ; on any 

 other subject I must perforce speak at second hand. I 

 would beg your forbearance, therefore, if I venture to 

 offer you a necessarily brief historical and descriptive 

 account of some of the great botanical gardens of the 

 world, and endeavour to shew you how the idea of a 

 botanic garden first arose in the minds of the medieval 

 botanists and thereafter became concrete in the continent 

 of Europe and in our own country. I trust that some, at 

 least, of the remarks I have to make may be new to you, 

 and if I fail to make the subject interesting you will I 

 hope lay the blame on the teller not on the story. 



It requires no great powers of observation and of 

 reasoning to enable us to classify gardens as either useful, 

 ornamental or scientific. Not that a scientific garden is 

 not or cannot be ornamental and even economically useful, 

 or a useful garden at once scientific and ornamental, but 

 simply that in planning out a garden we are accustomed 

 to consider primarily whether it is to aim at being a 

 decorative appendage to a house or a city, an area set a- 

 part for the cultivation of pot herbs or a living museum 

 for study and research. Scientific or Botanic Gardens 

 proper have for their chief purpose the advancement of 

 the science of Botany, are therefore just as old as the 

 science itself and naturally have developed pari passu 

 with it. An outline knowledge of the history of Botany 

 will obviously aid us greatly in understanding the devel- 



