DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
237 
The most celebrated member of this Society of Gardeners 
was Philip Miller, keeper of the Chelsea Physic-garden, and 
author of a well-known Gardener’s Dictionary. This work first 
appeared in 1731, and was so popular that a seventh edition 
was brought out in 1759, and it was translated into Dutch, 
German, and French. Each successive edition shows some 
progress in the science of botany, and an immense increase in 
the number of foreign plants. In the seventh edition, Miller 
adopted the Linnsean system of classification. He had previ¬ 
ously become acquainted with the great Swede during his visit 
to England in 1736, and it was the year following that Linnaeus’s 
first great work, which revolutionized classification, Genera 
Plantarum, appeared. Miller was a man well suited to the 
work he undertook; he was both practical and scientific; he 
first followed the system of Tournefort, then that of Ray, but 
was sufficiently learned and clear-sighted to go with the times, 
and adopt the improved nomenclature of Linnaeus. The 
quantities of new plants coming in not only required skilful 
growing, but careful arrangement and classification, and Philip 
Miller did much good work in both ways. 
Not only were plants arriving in from America, but new 
treasures found their way to England from distant parts of the 
Old World also. William Sherard, a learned botanist and 
friend of Ray and Sloane, and patron of Catesby, was, in 1702, 
appointed Consul at Smyrna, and during his stay there, until 
1718, employed much of his time in making a collecton of the 
plants of Greece and Asia Minor. His younger brother, 
James, at Eltham in Kent, had a famous garden, and cultivated 
many of the new exotics sent home by William. Besides 
foreign importations, gardeners at home added to the number 
of cultivated plants by trying experiments of hybridizing, 
producing double varieties, and more especially variegation. 
Such things as variegated “ silver-striped,” or “ gold-blotched,” 
lilacs, syringa, privet, phillyrea, or maple were great favourites. 
Improved methods of heating and building conservatories 
and hot-houses made it possible not only to shelter “ tender 
exotics ” and grow fruit, but to force vegetables. Attempts 
were made to force grapes, and the experiment was tried by the 
Duke of Rutland at Bel voir, Bradley and Switzer describe 
