PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15 



rendered yearly to the Royal Society 50 species of distinct 

 plants, well dried, preserved and named, which had been 

 grown in the garden that same year — those presented in 

 each year to be specifically different from those of every 

 former year, until 2000 had been delivered. 



One gets a fairly good idea of the contents of the 

 Chelsea Garden at this time from the Catalogue published 

 in 1730 by Miller, the then chief gardener. The plants 

 were classified into herbs and under shrubs, shrubs and 

 trees each section being arranged alphabetically. Four 

 hundred and ninety nine plants in all are named and are 

 chiefly those which were employed in the pharmaceutical 

 preparations of that day. Hothouses for the cultivation 

 of exotics were opened in 1732. Four years later Linn- 

 aeus visited the garden, and no doubt his interest in it 

 did much towards hastening the introduction of the 

 Linnaean method into the systematic arrangement of the 

 plants in the gardens. Amongst the directors of Chelsea 

 Garden appear the names of some of the foremost of our 

 English botanists — Sherard, whose generosity established 

 the Sherardian professorship at Oxford — Hudson, the 

 author of the Flora Anglica—Cmtis, the editor of the 

 familiar Botanical Magazine, and Lindley, whose contri- 

 butions to systematic Botany and to Taxonomy are too 

 well known to need enumeration. 



The gardens are now more of historic than of scientific 

 importance, being dwarfed into insignificance by the great, 

 but comparatively modern, establishment at Kew. It 

 now covers about four acres along the Chelsea embank- 

 ment. The centre is occupied by the statue of Sir Hans 

 Sloane ; the upper part of the garden contains the col- 

 lection of medicinal plants, whilst towards the river are 

 arranged beds of hardy herbaceous plants in natural 

 orders, with trees and shrubs interspersed, the remains of 



