PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 17 



are laid out entirely to suit the botanical character of the 

 plant, and in accordance with its natural habit and in no 

 respect with its usefulness to man. These three historic 

 gardens Padua, Montpellier and Upsala, may indeed be 

 taken as illustrating three great stages in the evolution 

 not only of the botanic garden itself but also of the science 

 of Botany. Established first of all in Italy as a living 

 herbal, as a concrete illustration of Medicinal Botany, the 

 garden reflected in itself the birth of the science when it 

 became planned, as at Montpellier, partly on utilitarian, 

 partly on physiological lines, and becomes finally in Upsala 

 a purely educational establishment conceived and carried 

 out in accordance with scientific principles. 



To attempt to follow the history or even enumerate the 

 botanical gardens founded in other cities in the end of the 

 last and the beginning of this century, and to trace how 

 the hard and formal scientific conception of a botanic 

 garden became artistically modified and softened, would 

 lead me far beyond the limits of time which your courtesy 

 grants me. Merely as an illustration, however, of the 

 rapidity with which the number of gardens increased 

 during the period of which I speak, I may mention that in 

 Italy alone gardens were founded in Turin in 1729, in Pavia 

 and Cagliari in 1765, in Parma in 1770, in Modena in 1772, 

 in Palermo in 1779, in Mantua in 1780, in Milan in 1781, 

 in Siena in 1784, in Naples in 1796, in Genoa in 1803 

 and in Venice in 1810. And again as exemplifying 

 the influence of the development of the artistic sense 

 in the laying out of gardens I may ask you to contrast 

 a photograph of the gardens of Madrid in 1781 with one 

 which represents the same garden one hundred years 

 later. The rectangular beds and geometrically arranged 

 paths of the former give place to irregular figures m the 

 ground plan of the latter ; whilst even in the areas where 



