BOTANICAL GARDENS. The original concept of a botanical garden was that literally implied by the name; that is, a garden with the plants arranged according to some system of botanical classification. In the forerunners of the modern botanical garden, such as the gardens of simples commonly associated with schools of medicine in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the planting was primitive and possibly based on the use of the plants, in medicine or otherwise, rather than on the more or less crude botanical concepts of the time. A botanical garden differs from a park, where the plants are usually arranged solely with reference to securing a beautiful landscape effect. The primary purpose of a park, moreover, is recreation, while that of a botanical garden has always been science and education. A botanical garden is properly defined as a scientific and educational institution whose purpose is the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge and love of plants.

(Enclyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 3: 942)