8 TEANSACTIONS LIVEEPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of popular interests and the necessities of international 

 commerce encouraged the foundation of museums of 

 Economic Botany. In short all the progressive phases in 

 the development of the Science of Botany had their 

 concrete counterparts in the evolution of the Physic 

 Garden of the 15th century into the scientific Botanic 

 Garden of the 19th. 



In the time that is placed at my disposal this evening 

 I desire to give you some notion of this progressive 

 development and to describe to you a few illustrative 

 examples of the Physic Gardens of the Herbal period, of 

 the Botanic Gardens of the 17th and 18th centuries and 

 finally of the modern Botanic Gardens both in our own 

 country and abroad. 



It is not necessary for my present purpose to do more 

 than name some of the gardens of classical times. I do 

 not refer of course to the numberless private gardens 

 attached to the palaces and villas of the Greek and Koman 

 nobles, but to the public gardens, records of which have 

 come down to us in the classics. Amongst these perhaps 

 the most famous are the gardens of Theophrastus at 

 Athens, and of Ptolemy Philadelphus at Alexandria, of 

 King Attalus at Pergamos, and the gardens of Carthage. 

 We read also of a medicinal garden belonging to Antonius 

 Castor at Kome, perhaps the first of its kind, and Vergil, 

 Martial and other Latin writers frequently refer to 

 gardens devoted to the culture of the vegetable delicacies 

 most fancied by the palates of the Eoman epicures. 



In the early middle ages the various monkish orders 

 were, as every one knows, the custodians of the degenerate 

 knowledge and practice of medicine transmitted from the 

 later Latin authors, until the quaint mixture of ancient 

 science and medieval black art was at last superseded by 

 the Benedictines, whose academy at Monte Cassino in 



