THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
OCTOBER,  1905. 
:  '% 
LONDON  BOTANIC  GARDENS. 
By  Pierre  Eue  Feux  Perredes,  B.Sc,  F.L.S., 
Pharmaceutical  Chemist. 
A  Contribution  from  the  Wellcome  Research  Laboratories,  London. 
I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
The  origin  of  our  Botanic  Gardens  may  be  traced  to  the  private 
gardens  of  the  herbalists  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. 
Among  these  the  garden  of  John  Gerarde,  in  Holborn,  which  was 
situated  within  little  more  than  a  stone's  throw  from  the  site  upon 
which  the  Wellcome  Chemical  Research  Laboratories  now  stand, 
may  be  cited  as  a  noteworthy  example.  One  of  the  main  objects  of 
these  early  cultivators  was  the  determination  of  the  characteristic 
features  of  plants  used  as  remedial  agents,  ?M  the  framing  of  de- 
scriptions that  would  enable  others  to  recognize  such  plants.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  many  of  their  observations  (e.  g.  those  of 
Parkinson)  are  remarkably  shrewd  and  accurate. 
The  Chelsea  Physic  Garden,  established  by  the  Society  of  Apoth- 
ecaries of  London,  in  1673,  was>  to  a  great  extent,  based  on  the 
same  plan  as  the  gardens  of  these  herbalists;  but,  unlike  them,  it  was 
supported  by  a  public  body,  so  that  it  has  survived  to  the  present 
day.  It  was  the  first  public  institution  of  the  kind  in  London,  and 
it  still  remains  as  the  oldest  Botanic  Garden  in  the  metropolis. 
Kew  comes  next  in  point  of  age,  and  its  history  as  a  scientific 
institution  may  be  said  to  date  from  1759,  when  William  Aiton,  a 
pupil  of  Philip  Miller,  of  the  Chelsea  Garden,  was  appointed  by  the 
Princess  Augusta  of  Saxe-Gotha,  Dowager  Princess  of  Wales,  for 
the  purpose  of  establishing  a  physic  garden  in  what  had  hitherto 
(45i) 
