hold of his beard crying 'Help! Help!' upon which people coming in and enquiring of the outcrie, Colman made reply that 'Bobart hath eaten his horse and his tayle hung out of his mouth.""

Bobart's salary was sometimes seriously in arrear, and he complained after the death of the Earl of Danby that he had received nothing for several years. It is not surprising, therefore, that on great occasions he was not above receiving presents of money for showing the garden. Thus on May 4, 1669, Cosmo di Medici, Prince of Tuscany and son to the Grand Duke, "went and saw the Physic Garden and being there (Bobart the Keeper having presented him with a very fine nosegay in the morning) the said Bobart spoke a speech in the German tongue to him, which he liking and his garden, he gave him a reward." A memorial of this visit still remains in the form of a view taken by an artist in the suite of Cosmo. The original is in the Laurentian Library at Florence and there is a photograph of it in the Bodleian Library. The view is taken from Cherwell Hall at the end of Cowley Place.

Amongst other triumphs of Bobart's art were two yew trees which grew close to the entrance gate of the garden. These trees he had clipped into the form of giants, and by a very bad pun the wits of the time called them his yewmen of the guard. They seem to have been replaced in Loggan's engraving [Fig. 1] by two statues.

4

Messrs. Vines and Druce in their interesting "Account of the Morisonian Herbarium," (Oxford 1914, p. xvii), quote Baskerville's account of Bobart: "Here I may take leave to speake a word or two of old Jacob who now is fled from his Earthly Paradise. As to country he was by birth a German, born in Brunswick that great Rum brewhouse of Europe. In his younger dayes, as I remember, I have heard him say he was sometime a soldier by which Imploy and Travail he had opportunities of Augmenting his knowledge, for to his native Dutch he

For a long time I was unable to identify the person whom Ward always calls "Dr. Modesie" or "Dr. Modesy" until by piecing together the information he gives about him I arrived at the conclusion that he could be none other than the famous gardener, Dr. Robert Morison.

ROBERT MORISON

Morison [Fig. 3] was born at Aberdeen in 1620 and graduated in the University of Aberdeen in 1638. He devoted himself at first to mathematics and Hebrew, being intended for the ministry. In taking part in the Civil War on the Royalist side he received a wound of the head while fighting at the Brigg of Dee. He afterwards went to Paris and took the degree of M.D. at Angers in 1648. He was then received into the household of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, in the capacity of physician upon the recommendation of Vespasian Robin, the French King's botanist. It is probable that his botanical tastes were fostered by his association with Abel Bruyner and Nicholas Marchant, the keepers of the Duke's garden at Blois. He held the appointment of physician, to which a handsome salary was attached, from 1650 until 1660, and it was perhaps at this time that he changed his name from Morison to Modesi as being easier of pronunciation by the French tongue. While in the Duke's service he was sent to Montpellier, Fontainebleau, Burgundy, Poitou, Brittany, Languedoc and Provence in search of new plants.

added the English Language and he did understand Latine pretty well. As to fabrick of body he was by nature very well built (his son in respect of him but a shrimp) tall, straite and strong with square shoulders and a head well set upon them. In his latter dayes he delighted to weare a long Beard and once against Whitsontide had a fancy to tagg it with silver, which drew much company in the physic Garden. But to save you further trouble view his shadow in this Picture." [See Loggan engraving Fig. 2.]

royal gardens in England at a salary of £200 a year and a house. He was incorporated M.D. Oxon. from University College in 1669, and in the same year he became Sherardian Professor of Botany in the University. He lectured to considerable

course consisting of three lectures a week for five weeks. While on a visit to London he was struck in the chest by the pole of a coach as he was crossing the Strand from Northumberland House to St. Martin's Lane and his skull was fractured by falling

held. He seems, too, to have been one of the first to make use of dichotomous keys to specific characters, and he denied the existence of spontaneous generation.

Anthony Wood gives an interesting sidelight upon Morison when he says that upon the occasion of the visit to Oxford of the Duke of York (afterwards King James II) with the Duchess of York on May 18, 1683, "Dr. Robert Morison the botanick professor speaking an English speech was often out and made them laugh. This person, though a master in speaking and writing the Latin tongue yet hath no command of English as being much spoyled by his Scottish tongue." He seems to have been more fortunate on September 9, 1680, for he presented-no doubt in Latin-an address to the Electoral Prince Carolus, Comes Palatinus ad Rhenum, Dux Bavariæ, to Convocation for the degree of Doctor of Physic.

FIG. 4. Photograph of a page of John Ward's diary.*

*The volume from which this page of Ward's diary is taken has a colophon: "This book was begunne ffeb.21.1661; and finished April ye 24th. 1663; att Mr. Brooks his hous in Stratford uppon Avon in Warwicke-shire." The page contains the often quoted entry about the death of Shakespeare. What stuffi is your Lithuanian hydromel. With ye Spuma of Beer method 1 haue heard of some great cures done

What were ye Teutonick Order;

EDWARD MORGAN

"Ned Morgan," who will be mentioned so often is, I believe, the Morgan referred to by Evelyn in his "Diary" under the date June 10, 1658, where there is an entry: "I went to see ye Medical Garden at Westminster, well stored with plants under Morgan a very skilful botanist." This Westminster Medical Garden, the site of which I have not been able to identify, is said to have existed and to have been used as

Shakespeare Drayton and Ben-Johnson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted.

hares in ye winter time turne white all ouer Livonia. Whether a Justice of peace after hee is made highsherif is ipso facto outed from being a Justice until hee gets a new Commission, itt is affirmed yt hee is; whether a Lord may at all bee arrested or not. I haue heard not; A Lord cannot bee arrested by a warrant from a Justice or a supplication out of ye Chancerie, only ye Lord Chancelour may graunt a sub-poena to ye Lord.

A fine barrs only Issue: a common recoverie barrs all Remainders in tail as Brothers & whosoever.

a physic garden by the Society of Apothecaries before they established the well known one at Chelsea. At any rate in 1676 the Court of Assistants of the Apothecaries Company agreed to take over the lease of the Westminster Garden from Mrs. Gape, the tenant, in order to remove the plants it contained to the newly founded garden at Chelsea; and in 1677 "Mr. Morgan the gardener asked for increased 'consideration' for keeping the garden and for his plants." Morgan may, therefore, have acted as gardener at the earliest period of the Chelsea garden; but there is no farther allusion to him in the Court Minutes of the Society of Apothecaries, and Pigott is usually said to have been the first person put in charge of the garden. The last number of The Bodleian Quarterly Records contains an interesting note by Mr. G. Claridge Druce entitled "Edward Morgan's Hortus Siccus." He says that the Bodleian Library contains three large folio volumes which up to 1845 were kept in the Botanic Garden Library. They are bound in rough calf and each contains about 160 leaves. They are entered in Bernard's Catalogue (1697) as "Hortus Siccus sive Collectio Plantarum ab ipso Eduardo Morgano facta ordine alphabetico, bis mille circiter plantarum species exhibens." The work seems to have been begun in 1672, and there is a letter from "Thomas Thornes to Edward Morgan liveinge att Bodesclen offering anything in Leweny (Hall in Denbighshire). Aiton ascribes the introduction of Phlomis purpurea to Morgan. Mr. Druce also states, on the authority of Mr. J. Griffith, the Welsh archæologist, that the family of Robert Wynn (a branch of the Gwydur family) intermarried with the Morgans of Golden Grove-a seat about 4 miles from Rhuddlan and there was a son who became a Bencher of the Middle Temple in 1597 and died in 1611. He had a son-Edward Morgan-who died without issue. This 5 The Bodleian Quarterly Record, vol. 2, p. 227.

the pages, will show the peculiarities of the handwriting.

The earliest entry about botany runs:

"Palyurus or Christ's Thorne I saw itt in ye physicke garden and haue, I think, a piece of itt in my Botanologicall Booke; itt is very sharp. They fain yt ye ThornyCrowne wch Christ wore was made of this.

"Bobart ye physick gardiner hee had a feavour an. 1660 and after itt his hands and his feet pilld (peeled); his very flesh came off.

"This present year 1660 Bobart says hee never saw nor never knew so many things in flour as yr was before ye 20th. day of ye month of Januarie.

"Five sorts of fritillaries Jacob saies they have in ye garden; wee saw ym in flour March ye 23 1661 in ye Garden.

"The 28th. March 1661 wee went to Shotover to find lanaria by Jacob's directions but found none but fragarias

and Cerefolium silvestre and some few others."

"White Anemones found on Shotover Hill.

"I was uppon New College wall on ye 17th April 1661 to find ruta muraria (Adianthum album) but could find none but much adianthum nigrum (Capillus veneris) was there.

"The foye grape is very large but sour and bears little and one of the worser sort as Jacob told mee, though sometimes you shall have a branch of 2 pound weight.

"Jacob found two chestnut trees wild toward Newberie and many hee hath seen growing in Sion-Colledge garden which brought chestnuts to perfection."

both show a large garden bounded by Coleman Street on the east and London Wall on the north, which possibly represents this garden.

"Jacob hath a very prettie Orchis which resembles a Bee. I saw itt May ye 4th. 1661.

"Dentaria (Tooth Violet) I saw but itt was somewhat withered; hee told mee there was one at Cornbury park yt. spred extremely."

Cornbury Park is near Charlbury and was a part of the Wychwood forest. Its present owner-Mr. Vernon Watneylately offered to store and brick up any treasures from the Bodleian Library which might need protection from air raids.

"There is a gentleman in Worcestershire wch. hath made very considerable progress in altering flowers artificially, as Jacob told mee, he knows not his name.

"That sedum in Bobart's house hath hung up these 8 years only by taking of ye cloth now and yn and anointing itt with oil once a quarter and so putting itt on againe.

"Hot Beds made with horse dung a foot deep in very fine sifted and fat mold.

"There are 8 kinds of sorrel; ye common, ye greater ffrench; ye great German; ye little round leafd ffrench; ye sheep's and three Lujulas. This Jacob told mee. Parkinson only knew of two 'the common sorrell familiar enough in many places of this land the other a strangere as farre as I can learne and onely cherished in the gardens of those that are curious. This groweth in divers shadowie places about Sevill in Spaine and in gardens at Mompellier.'

"May ye 9th. An. Dom. 1661 att ye physick garden. Almonds in ye physic garden come to some kind of ripeness.

"Oil of Almonds made only by powdering ye Almonds and pressing of them; such almond oil is to bee drawne fresh.