122 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



acquainted with John Lagg, the ostler of that establishment, who 

 was a sober and steady man, with a considerable knowledge of 

 plants, which he had acquiredjfrom reading the works of Gerarde 

 and John Parkinson ! So impressed was young Curtis by this 

 poor man and his books that he took up the study of natural 

 history and botany especially, so that to the influence of Lagg 

 the ostler we may really be said to owe the origin of the longest 

 lived and best of all our botanical periodicals. 



Curtis had gardens in Lambeth Marsh and in Brompton, in 

 which to grow plants for his lectures and demonstrations in the 

 Chelsea garden. He died in 1779 in his 53rd year, and is buried 

 at Battersea. It is scarcely too much to call Curtis and James 

 Sowerby the fathers of pictorial botany and gardening. Edwards 

 and Andrews also deserve mention for their plates. 



1790. Bichard Pulteney. Dr. Pulteney wrote " Historical 

 and Biographical Sketches on the Progress of Botany," and 

 rarely designed to mention garden writers unless, as he says, 

 eminent for their acquaintance with English Botany, and 

 amongst those who fulfil his requirements he instances Fair- 

 child, Knowlton, Gordon, and Miller. 



1791. Kichard Anthony Salisbury was the first secretary of 

 the Horticultural Society, and wrote several works and some 

 valuable papers. 



1797. Thomas Andrew Knight, F.B.S., Knight was born 

 amongst the apple-orchards of Herefordshire in 1759, and was one 

 of the best horticulturists of his time. In 1804 he was mainly 

 instrumental in establishing the Horticultural Society, of which he 

 was afterwards President, and by his enlightened experiments and 

 writings he exerted much influence on the practice and literature 

 of horticulture. To Knight and the late Kobert Thompson, 

 author of the well-known " Gardener's Assistant," it was due in 

 a great measure that the Horticultural Society took such a 

 great, and for the whole country such a beneficial, action in the 

 culture of the best fruit trees. 



1803. John Claudius Loudon began to practise as a land- 

 scape gardener at this date, having been born in Lanarkshire in 

 1782. Like Tusser and Arthur Young he failed in farming, and 

 is best known for his works on gardening and trees and shrubs. 

 His encyclopaedias of gardening published in 1827 and his 

 Arboretum and Eruticetum Britannicum arc useful works of 



