The botanist : being the botanical part of a course of lectures on natural history, delivered in the University at Cambridge : together with a discourse on the principle of vitality / by Benjamin Waterhouse.

  • Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846.
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The botanist : being the botanical part of a course of lectures on natural history, delivered in the University at Cambridge : together with a discourse on the principle of vitality / by Benjamin Waterhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    11/272
    college ; and, in a year or two more, several gentle- men of opulence and literary influence in the gov- ernment of the University, came to the resolution of laying a foundation for a Professorship of Bota- ny and Entomology ; to which they determined to annex an extensive Botanical Garden. Rejoiced at a prospect of seeing accomplished, by a rich asso- ciation, what he had long anxiously, and alone, endeavoured in vain to effect, the author of these essays did every thing in his power to forward the design. The business began, and progressed with a zeal bordering on enthusiasm. Besides a sub- scription of between thirty and forty thousand dol- lars, the Legislature of the Commonwealth gave two townships of land towards maintaining a Pro- fessorship of Natural History, and for a Botanical Garden at Cambridge. But the author saw, that amidst all this ardour, scarcely one in ten of the subscribers knew exactly what they were subscrib- ing for. Very few of them knew what a Botanical Garden was, or rather what its objects and ends were ; yet with a general and indistinct idea, that the knowledge of plants and insects would be of vast benefit to the community, they subscribed to the scheme with a generosity characteristic of New- England merchants.