Building a Botanic Garden

Thomas Martyn was appointed to the botanical professorship as direct successor to his father, John Martyn (1699–1768), who held the post between 1732 and 1762. Thomas Martyn's appointment came two years after the foundation of the Cambridge Botanic Garden when, in 1760, Richard Walker (1679–1764), the vice-master of Trinity College, transferred £1,600 to the university to establish “a public Botanic or Physic garden.”Footnote ¹⁹ The funds were used to purchase the former Augustinian Priory in central Cambridge to house the proposed garden.Footnote ²⁰ Walker also established “two offices of a Reader on Plants, and a Curator,” the latter to be tasked with cataloguing and organizing the garden.Footnote ²¹ Walker's death in 1764 gave Martyn and Charles Miller (1739–1817), the first curator and son of Philip Miller (1691–1771), head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, the opportunity to realize their own vision of how a botanic garden should be organized and interact with the wider world.

Martyn, Miller, and successive curators continued Walker's plan of creating a garden that, rather than serving the medical school as a physic garden, served the theological interests of members of the university (figure 1). Martyn's interests in integrating botany with natural theology reflected his clerical training; as his biographer noted, “Professor Martyn's religious principles were firm and steady. While deeply conversant with the most beautiful works of God, in the inanimate creation, he was not forgetful of their Divine Author.”Footnote ²² Martyn's combined religious and philosophical approach shaped the Cambridge Botanic Garden and his associated course of lectures alongside a desire to explore the extent and utility of God's creation.

Figure 1

Tenure of curators of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, 1762–1846. From 1770 to 1778, Martyn took on this role alongside the professorship.

Theological interests formed the core motivation for founding a botanic garden in Cambridge. In 1763, Walker published A Short Account of a Donation of a Botanic Garden to the University of Cambridge, outlining how “the study of Botany has for its object the Wisdom and Goodness of God, which is no where more manifest than in the Vegetable part of creation.” Walker designed the garden as a teaching collection, allowing students to examine different plants, an exercise that paved the way for them to “answer the gracious end and design for which they [plants] were given.”Footnote ²³ Theological approaches to natural history, and especially botany, reflected the interests of earlier fellows of Trinity College, perhaps the most notable being John Ray (1626–1705). In addition to Historia Plantarum (1686–1704), the first attempt to provide an inventory of all known plants, Ray wrote The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1691), in which he explained that all the products of the natural world were manifestations of the Mind of God.Footnote ²⁴ By the early eighteenth century, Ray, and the natural philosopher William Derham (1657–1735), had developed a distinctly Anglican-English natural theology in which divine creation had only limited connections to human convenience.Footnote ²⁵

Ray kept a botanic garden at Trinity College in the early 1660s, a tradition Walker resumed in the 1740s through founding a private garden adjacent to the Great Gate of the college. Walker's garden contained a heated glasshouse and accommodated the numerous plants originating in Asia and the Americas that he received from Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden.Footnote ²⁶ Walker, who had completed a doctorate of divinity in 1728, viewed the establishment of a botanic garden as a means of securing Ray's legacy, commenting that a main university Botanic Garden would “prosecute a further search into the useful branch of natural knowledge: where Mr. Ray assures, we shall never want matter for further research.”Footnote ²⁷

The tenets of Anglican theology and a wish to display the extent of God's creation through the vegetable kingdom were central to the foundation of the Cambridge Botanic Garden. Walker did, however, acknowledge that the study of botany had some practical applications, observing, “we employ our best faculties and endeavors, to find out the Salutary Virtues of Plants, and their uses for the convenience of Life.” This interest was indicated as secondary in statutes of the garden noting that plants should be subjected to regular “Trials and Experiments”—although “Flowers and Fruits must be looked upon as amusements only as these do not want their Excellencies and Uses, they need not be totally neglected.”Footnote ²⁸

Walker's interest in exploring the extent of God's creation was enshrined in the garden's statutes, and it was left to Martyn and Miller to interpret these rules when planting and designing the garden. This process coincided with a period of great change in the practice of natural history in Britain, as the system of classification and binomial nomenclature devised by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) began to take precedence over Ray's earlier system.Footnote ²⁹ This was a result of the brevity and simplicity of Linnaeus's artificial system of classification, grouping plants into classes, orders, genera, and species and forming their unique binomial names from the last two categories. The Linnaean system overcame many of the problems, including synonymy, associated with the polynomials used by previous naturalists, and thus aided communication.Footnote ³⁰ In an early meeting of the trustees of the botanic garden, Martyn announced the importance of using this new systematic approach on a practical and philosophical level: “Whereas it appears to us absolutely necessary in order to facilitate the study of Botany, and to render the Garden of general use, that the plants therein might be ranged and marked according to the system of Linnaeus; and that a Catalogue of them should be printed.”Footnote ³¹

The Linnaean system of classification not only enforced a rigorous organization on the garden that facilitated the influx of exotic species from across the globe but also conformed to many of Walker's and Martyn's theological interests. In the introduction to his Systema naturae (1758–59), Linnaeus made it clear that a greater understanding of nature, which necessitated a system of classification, was fundamental for gaining a deeper grasp of God's creation.Footnote ³² His declaration reflected the influence of works by Anglican clerics—including those by Ray and Derham, which had appeared in Swedish translations in 1739—who treated natural history as a devotional activity that could be relayed through teaching students, with many of their lectures taking a similar structure and delivery to a religious service. He even opened the tenth edition of Systema naturae, the first to consistently use Latin binomial names, with the same quotation from the book of Psalms that Ray used to open his Wisdom of God.Footnote ³³ Linnaeus designed his system to map out the mysteries of creation and move more deeply into God's decrees than any previous natural historian.Footnote ³⁴ For the Anglican clerics of Cambridge, this was an attractive proposition, justifying a Linnaean garden and an associated course of lectures.

The Linnaean system provided the perfect framework for the Cambridge Botanic Garden on a theological and practical level. The broad acceptance of the system and associated working practices in British botanical circles by private collectors and institutions, including the British Museum, facilitated advanced communication, aligning Cambridge with foundations such as Kew Gardens. Martyn was well aware of these institutions; in his first course of lectures, he described how “the noble Garden at Kew is excellently furnished, and considering how few years it has subsisted is in wonderful Forwardness.”Footnote ³⁵ The simultaneous use of the Linnaean system initiated the exchange of specimens between Cambridge and Kew, allowing Martyn and his curators to build the Cambridge collection with plants received from across Kew's colonial network.

The Cambridge garden had an associated lecture room, library, and museum. Walker specified that part of the old Mansion House, a dilapidated remnant of the Augustinian Priory, would be “appointed for the Reader's lectures” and “the large unfurnished room above the stairs be made a Library for Books in Botany and other sciences relating thereto: and a part thereof for the Hortus Siccus.”Footnote ³⁶ This arrangement ensured a close relationship between the various botanical published works accessioned into the library and the plants added to the garden and herbarium, giving a structure that facilitated the production of systematic catalogues of species. Books supported the binomial names attached to plants and specimens, creating chains of references connecting the library and the collection of dried specimens and living plants.Footnote ³⁷ An advanced information management system was central for Martyn's scheme to introduce Linnaean systematics into university teaching. Writing to the botanist Richard Pulteney (1730–1801) in 1791, Martyn noted that his lectures of 1762 “were the first public notices of the Linnaean system, and have contributed much to the spread of it,” adding that his teaching program “disseminated knowledge of botany, and of the Linnaean system among us.”Footnote ³⁸

This extensive deployment of the Linnaean program required a substantial library to name, describe, and classify species.Footnote ³⁹ The books in the library were essentially private tools used to manage a public institution. Martyn outlined a Linnaean arrangement in a plan of the garden published in 1771, showing how the site was divided into specific areas, with plants arranged according to the conventions for botanic gardens specified in Linnaeus's Philosophia Botanica (figure 2). Linnaeus's plan designated three different greenhouses each representing a climatic zone, “with walls containing windows facing towards the south.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The greenhouses were to be positioned in front of “a museum, which should be oblong, tall and narrow,” while the main systematic beds would retain a close association with museum specimens.Footnote ⁴¹ The Cambridge Botanic Garden was arranged along similar lines, divided into specific areas based on the Linnaean hierarchy and taking the size and climatic requirements of each plant into account. For example, from the early 1770s, tropical species requiring warmer conditions were kept in the south-facing greenhouses, while larger trees and shrubs were placed at the edges of the garden.

Figure 2

Martyn's plan outlining the Linnaean design of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, published with his Catalogus Horti Botanici Cantabrigiensis (1771), Cam.a.771.1, Rare Books, Cambridge University Library. The different alphabetical allocations of space are based on the outline given by Linnaeus in Philosophia Botanica. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

That arrangement made Cambridge the first institutional botanic garden in Britain founded on Linnaean principles. It is probable that Martyn received firsthand advice on its layout from those familiar with Linnaeus's garden in Uppsala. An example is Daniel Solander (1733–1782), a student of Linnaeus who had been appointed to reclassify the British Museum's botanical collection according to the Linnaean system in 1763.Footnote ⁴² In 1760, Martyn wrote to Pulteney, “I wish too M. Solander would make a visit here that I might have the pleasure of conversing with a Pupil of Linnaeus's & whom I have heard a very good character.”Footnote ⁴³ Other British botanic gardens were still arranged according to the earlier systems of classification devised by Ray and Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and according to various horticultural and medical practices designed to serve the needs of societies of physicians and medical schools. John Hope, professor of botany and materia medica in Edinburgh, did not start reorganizing the botanic garden there according to the Linnaean system until after 1763. Unlike Martyn, Hope placed an emphasis on the medical and economic properties of plants and did not follow rigid formal Linnaean conventions in the garden's layout.Footnote ⁴⁴ In Oxford, it was not until the 1780s, with the appointment of John Sibthorp as third Sherardian Professor of Botany, that efforts were made to integrate the Linnaean system into teaching and the design of the botanic garden at the university.Footnote ⁴⁵

Martyn's teaching program required a Linnaean garden: he claimed that “to teach this extensive science without a good garden is next to impossible.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Given his division of plants into neat parallel rows, it is plausible that Martyn based the design on Solander's advice and published plans of the Uppsala Botanic Garden (figure 3).Footnote ⁴⁷ Martyn and his father, John Martyn, who had laid the foundations for the garden and museum, both corresponded with Linnaeus. In a letter to William Coxe (1748–1828) in 1809, Thomas Martyn wrote, “I had long been acquainted with the Systema naturae, Genera Plantarum, and Critica Botanica, which Linnaeus himself presented to my father.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Thomas Martyn's familiarity with these Linnaean publications influenced his design of the garden; following the instructions given in Philosophia Botanica, he organized the plants according to the classes, orders, and genera of Linnaeus's sexual system of classification.Footnote ⁴⁹

Figure 3

Cambridge Botanic Garden in 1815; engraving by Joseph Constantine Stadler (ca. 1755–1828) after an illustration by William Westall (1781–1850), showing the greenhouses in the foreground with Kings’ College and St. Benet's Church in the background. Wh. 4510, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge.

Growing a Global Collection

A desire to survey the full extent of God's creation inspired the development of a global network to acquire specimens, seeds, bulbs, and living plants. Communication across this network was streamlined through the widespread use of the Linnaean system that both allowed for the identification and description of species and ultimately dictated their physical placement within the garden. In 1761, Walker had received a consignment of plants from the botanist Peter Collinson (1694–1768), who imported and cultivated numerous American species in his garden at Mill Hill in north London. Writing to Walker, Collinson outlined his intent to “Contribute my Mite & by tomorrow Wagon send a Basket of some fine Perennial Ground plants”; he also passed on the names of several nurserymen.Footnote ⁵⁰ Many of Collinson's plants originated in North America, where he maintained a vast correspondence network across which he championed the use of the Linnaean system.

The acquisition of species from the Americas became a priority for Martyn during the 1760s. He stated in his lectures, “The great Enlargement of the British Dominions in America, has opened a wide Field for New Discoveries and Improvements in Natural History; and the Extensiveness, I might also say, the Universality, of our trade, gives into our Hands the Natural Treasures of every Climate.”Footnote ⁵¹ Martyn's interest in American plants came as a direct result of territorial conquests made during the Seven Years’ War that had concluded with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. His lectures on the acquisition of American plants for the garden were inspired by aspirations of many prospective priests, the largest group of students in Cambridge during this period, to cross the Atlantic to promote Anglicanism in America.Footnote ⁵²

By 1765, Martyn's interests in classifying and cultivating American plants had become known to his peers at other universities. Writing to Martyn from the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, John Hope described a shipment of “100 parcels of different seeds from Quebec” and offered to “send for your garden at Cambridge a small part of each.”Footnote ⁵³ Hope's redistribution of duplicate seeds represents the sustained connection between the Cambridge and Edinburgh botanic gardens during the 1760s and reflects contemporary attempts to cultivate North American species in Europe. For example, after returning to Sweden from North America in 1751, the Linnaean apostle Pehr Kalm attempted to cultivate a range of seeds.Footnote ⁵⁴ Cultivating Hope's seeds from Quebec advanced Martyn's desire to “Turn for the Study of Nature to Search for Hidden Treasures of distant Countries, especially those which have been lately added to the Dominions of Britain in America.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Martyn saw it as his task to spread knowledge of these regions to his students, some of whom became priests in the American colonies and, after the 1770s, in India, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land.Footnote ⁵⁶

Martyn had gained some of knowledge of managing global networks in the Americas from his father and predecessor as professor, who had left his collection of botanical books and specimens to the university.Footnote ⁵⁷ As a resident of the village of Chelsea during the 1730s, John Martyn had close connections with Philip Miller and the wealthy collector and plantation owner Hans Sloane (1660–1753).Footnote ⁵⁸ He used specimens received from Miller and Sloane to compile heavily illustrated works, including Historia Plantarum Rariorum, published in fascicles from 1728 to 1737 and containing numerous early color copperplate images of American species by Elisha Kirkall (ca. 1682–1742).Footnote ⁵⁹ Several images are based on specimens from John Martyn's herbarium collection.Footnote ⁶⁰ In 1733, he received a consignment of specimens and books from William Houstoun (ca. 1696–1733), a physician hired by the trustees of the Province of Georgia to collect plants from the West Indies and Central America. The trustees intended Houstoun's plants to furnish a new botanic garden in Savannah with the view to stimulating medical and agricultural improvement in the new colony.Footnote ⁶¹ Houstoun wrote to Sloane from Veracruz in March 1731 about attempts to source specimens of Jalapa, a species commonly used as a purgative: “I have sent up an Indian who has brought me down four small roots of it which I hope will grow, and I believe we shall find it a plant quite different from the marvel of Peru.”Footnote ⁶² Houstoun's prolonged stay in Veracruz was a result of his being shipwrecked in the port; because the Spanish authorities did not allow him to explore the nearby province, he employed Indigenous and enslaved people to collect specimens of species with economic and medicinal uses.

Thomas Martyn sought to emulate the complex structures his father relied on to gather specimens, and his own theological interests encouraged him to diversify the provenance of the collection. A main opportunity came when Charles Miller left Cambridge in 1770 to take up a position with the East India Company in a new botanic garden established near Fort Marlborough in Sumatra.Footnote ⁶³ Martyn wrote to Pulteney, “[Miller] is gone to the East Indies, to execute a favourite scheme of Mr Sullivan's—the finding and cultivating [of] Nutmegs, or any of the Spices, or indeed any other vegetable productions which may make advantageous objects of commerce.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Miller's departure to Asia reflects the integration of the theological agendas of the Cambridge Botanic Garden with the schemes of Lawrence Sullivan, director of the East India Company between 1758 and 1786. Martyn described how Miller's departure “left a considerable additional burden on me,” brought on by his “offer to be Curator of the botanic garden without a salary,” thus taking on the roles of curator, reader, and professor in an attempt to alleviate the garden's financial problems.Footnote ⁶⁵

Miller described species he observed in Southeast Asia in the long letters he sent to Martyn, enclosing seeds and specimens and giving detailed accounts of the natural history and local customs. Writing from Fort Marlborough in 1771, Miller promised to send Martyn “a few seeds, by next years ships, in order to contribute to the increase of your collection.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Martyn received many specimens collected on Miller's numerous journeys throughout Sumatra, several “performed on foot by such Roads, & through such swamps & as would have been looked upon in Europe as absolutely impassable.”Footnote ⁶⁷

During these journeys, Miller relied on the Batak, a group indigenous to Northern Sumatra. He travelled through the rainforest to visit Batak villages, collecting information about local customs. He described how the skulls of criminals and vanquished warriors were “hung up as Trophies in the houses,”Footnote ⁶⁸ but he believed the Batak posed few risks to European travelers, and they assisted him in his botanical work: “[I]t is from their country most of the Cassia [cinnamon] sent to Europe is procured; & I went there in hopes of finding the Cinnamon also: but after researches & enquiries I could not meet with it. The Cassia Tree, of which I enclose you a small branch, grows to 50 or 60 feet in height, & asked the Country People to get me some; but they have a notion that it produces nothing neither.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Miller's description emphasized the agency of Indigenous groups in the collecting process and their lack of interest in collecting species that had a distinct commercial value for Europeans.Footnote ⁷⁰ Miller valued the knowledge local people communicated, relaying details to Martyn on specimen labels.Footnote ⁷¹ The example of cinnamon illustrates how important communication with Indigenous groups was for understanding the properties of unfamiliar plants; information reported back to Cambridge was integrated into a teaching program that sought to relay the diversity of botanical species and their uses across the British Empire.

Martyn fostered relationships with other global travelers to augment the collection. His contacts included Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, whom he visited in 1772 shortly after their return from James Cook's first circumnavigation. Martyn described the event in a letter: “Last week I had the pleasure of spending a morning with Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander: you will easily imagine how delighted I was to turn over the 3000 specimens of plants, 1000 of them new species; and colored drawings of 700, all elegantly & accurately done upon the spot; as were also very full descriptions; these Gentlemen expect in less than a month to set out for the Southern World, with three ships most royally equipped, and four draughtsmen, one for views & figures—the celebrated Zoffanii—and three for natural history.”Footnote ⁷²

In addition to examining Banks's specimens and illustrations, Martyn received duplicate herbarium specimens, which he added to the Cambridge Botanical Museum to allow students to study the extent of divine influence in the Pacific Ocean. Senecio tricuspidatus, a species endemic to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, retains an original label in Banks's hand referencing the “Banks Mss.”Footnote ⁷³ The label cites the manuscripts that Banks and Solander compiled during James Cook's first voyage, including Banks's “Catalogue of the Plants,” which Martyn viewed on his visit.Footnote ⁷⁴ Banks's manuscript listed the number of specimens collected in each locality during Cook's voyage and where they were stored in the drying books.Footnote ⁷⁵ Banks, Solander, and their field assistants had collected seven examples of Senecio tricuspidatus, including the specimen presented to Martyn.

Martyn continued to gather new species well into the nineteenth century with the aid of various curators, including James Donn (1758–1813) and Arthur Biggs (d. 1846), who sought to integrate the Botanic Garden's imperial collecting program with the university's broader administrative structures. By 1815, Biggs was using the garden's audit book to record the expenses associated with the carriage of seeds from Paris, Vienna, Gottingen, Moscow, and Königsberg.Footnote ⁷⁶ This practice reflects Cambridge's participation in a pan-European network of botanic gardens, stimulated by the connections Martyn made during his grand tour of 1779–1782, forging bonds with new universities founded by the Prussian state during the Napoleonic Wars while redistributing species he collected on other European imperial voyages. Seeds and specimens were often accompanied by catalogues of European botanic gardens, a typical example being an interleaved copy of Grigoriī Fedorovich Sobolevskiĭ's Catalogus Plantarum horti imperialis medici botanici Petropolitani (1796).Footnote ⁷⁷ Sobolevskiĭ's catalogue of the St. Petersburg Botanic Garden followed a similar Linnaean arrangement to that in the Cambridge Botanic Garden's published catalogues.Footnote ⁷⁸

Thus, the simultaneous use of the Linnaean system by botanical curators facilitated global exchange. By 1815, Biggs was recording postage charges for plants collected from across the British Empire, including a parcel of seeds from the Calcutta Botanic Garden. Many of these specimens had been cultivated in Calcutta with assistance from local Indians; the relationship with Cambridge was facilitated by its strong links with Kew and simultaneous use of the Linnaean system to communicate information.Footnote ⁷⁹ The practice of recording costs associated with shipments of plants and seeds from across Europe and the wider world in the university audit book illustrates a movement away from Martyn's private network and the integration of the process of gathering information within the university's main financial and administrative structures.

Even as this change was taking place, Martyn's personal network continued to develop the collection. This was assisted by the numerous connections Martyn made in London, where he resided in the 1780s and “was received fellow of the Linnean Society of London, lately instituted at London, and then meeting at the house of Dr. Smith on Great Marlborough Street. He was afterwards elected one of the Vice-Presidents, in which office he continued as long as he resided in London.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Martyn maintained these connections for the rest of his life. In 1821, he wrote to James Edward Smith (1759–1828), then president of the Linnaean Society of London, “Some time since I sent the Curator [at Cambridge] a parcel of seeds which I had received, with a box of specimens, from Van Diemen's Land; but I have never heard whether they succeeded. Some of them grew with me under many disadvantages.”Footnote ⁸¹ Martyn forwarded the specimens to Smith, describing how “of many species there is such abundance of specimens, that you may oblige all your friends . . . I offered the seeds to Sir Joseph Banks, but he seemed to think they had them at Kew, and regarded the Garden at Cambridge as the most proper place for them.”Footnote ⁸²

Individuals who sent specimens from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and New South Wales to botanical professors and aristocratic patrons such as Banks included Charles Fraser (1788–1831), the first state botanist of New South Wales, who visited Van Diemen's Land in 1818.Footnote ⁸³ The botanist Allan Cunningham (1791–1839) undertook his first voyage to Van Diemen's Land in 1819 and collected numerous botanical specimens, sending many to powerful patrons and institutions in Britain. Like Charles Miller in Sumatra, Cunningham observed Indigenous culture in Van Diemen's Land, compiling a vocabulary of the local Aboriginal languages while communicating with local people to understand the uses of plants.Footnote ⁸⁴

Numerous donations made to the Cambridge garden by members of the university remained an essential source for new specimens. In 1807 the then curator James Donn made “his acknowledgements to those friends of the Botanic Garden, (as well as Members of this University as possessors of Collections) who have persevered in advancing its credit by Their liberal contribution of rare and new Species.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Such donors included Edward Daniel Clarke (1769–1822), professor of mineralogy at Cambridge and university librarian, who collected plant specimens, books, manuscripts, antiquities, and a variety of other objects during his travels through Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, the Levant, and North Africa.Footnote ⁸⁶ Clarke's botanical specimens were accessioned into the garden's collection; by 1821, Cambridge guidebooks referred to the “many rare plants, collected by Dr. E. D. Clarke, in his travels into Greece, Egypt, &c.”Footnote ⁸⁷ These journeys were influenced by his interests in classics, biblical scripture, and natural theology, following routes described in the Bible and classical texts.Footnote ⁸⁸ In a poem written toward the end of his life, Clarke laid out how collecting botanical specimens provided a route to divine providence: “The Deity display'd, and all his power; / Beheld in every herb, in every plant.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Aware that these materials had to be organized according to the Linnaean system, Clarke collected relevant botanical texts in addition to specimens. In Sweden, he acquired texts of prominent Linnaean naturalists.Footnote ⁹⁰ Writing to William Otter (1768–1840) from Tronheim on 23 September 1799, Clarke noted that Daniel “Solander lived at Pitea, in Westro Bothnia, and in that neighbourhood I procured the Flora Suecia of Linnaeus, with his manuscript annotations.”Footnote ⁹¹ Clarke's interest in the provenance of this book reflects Cambridge academics’ consistent use of the Linnaean system and their interests in its development in relation to their theological agendas.

The Cambridge Botanic Garden's aspiration to survey the extent and utility of God's creation necessitated building connections with imperial projects. The global range of the botanical species in its collections reflects the variety of different methods of acquisition ranging from Martyn's personal connections to the official correspondence of the curators and the specimens donated by university members. Integrating new specimens in the collection required sophisticated information-management structures, a process explored in the next section.

Managing Information

The Cambridge Botanic Garden's development of systems for managing information and classifying accessions according to the Linnaean system relied on a range of botanical books dating from the sixteenth century through to contemporary publications. The garden's general impoverishment made it difficult to build a library. As a result, Martyn and Miller had to source books from donations, their own private collections, and Cambridge college libraries.Footnote ⁹² In February 1767, Martyn's fellowship at Sidney Sussex College allowed him to borrow copies of John Ray's Historia Plantarum and nine related books—including Gerarde's Herbal—volumes he returned more than two years later, over a period from February to November 1769.Footnote ⁹³ The long borrowing times indicate Martyn's and Miller's consistent use of the books to identify, describe, and order plants in the garden and museum.

While embodying necessary theological outlooks, the Linnaean system and binomial nomenclature provided the basis for a clear cataloguing structure for the garden from the 1760s onward. It embodied the regular use of annotated books by curators, professors, and students when identifying, describing, and locating plants, introducing new species within the physical and philosophical confines of the Linnaean system. By 1764, Walker noted, “[W]e have already introduced about 3000 new plants into the garden given by Mr. Miller of Chelsea and other Friends and we have reason to expect as many more next spring.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Walker also outlined the role of the curator, who “shall always be so well skilled in the System of Botany, as to arrange his plants in their proper order.”Footnote ⁹⁵ To fulfil this requirement, Charles Miller established a rigid systematic order to facilitate university teaching by making it possible to locate, identify, and assess the placement of specific living examples of species through the Linnaean system.

Many species cultivated in the garden were not new to the Linnaean system; they were already listed in Systema naturae (1758) and Species plantarum (1762–63), the most complete systematic inventories of all known plants and the first to endorse consistent use of Linnaeus's binomial nomenclature. In gathering species already known to European naturalists, the garden was developing a teaching collection designed to outline the extent of God's creation. The primary purpose of the annotated copies of Linnaeus's works kept by Miller and Martyn was not to integrate the names and diagnoses of new species, a practice used by institutions and private collectors who sought to collect new species, but to use information gathered through repeated observations of living plants to reorganize descriptions and the classificatory structures. Examples can be found throughout Miller's interleaved copy of Systema naturae, as he uses the blank pages to revise the descriptive diagnoses of the physical characters and their systematic arrangement (figure 4).Footnote ⁹⁶ Miller's revisions are keyed to the species numbers ascribed by Linnaeus. Species 21 relates to Veronica aruensis, commonly known as Green-Field Speedwell, next to which Miller's notes add a description of the peduncle and solitary flowers, refining Linnaeus's printed diagnosis emphasizing the auxiliary nature of the flowers and the lobes of the leaves.Footnote ⁹⁷ These notes link to surviving herbarium specimens. Martyn transcribed the diagnoses listed in Systema naturae for Veronica incana onto the specimen label, adding, “Hort. Cant Jul. 27 1761,” the date the plant was collected in the botanic garden.Footnote ⁹⁸

Figure 4

Charles Miller's annotated copy of Systema naturae (1758), CCC.47.208, Rare Books, Cambridge University Library, showing notes relating to species of Veronica and the addition of Pæderota on the opposite interleaved page. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

Miller's annotations in Systema naturae and Martyn's specimen labels indicate the close working relationship between the botanical professor and curator. A new genus Miller added to his interleaved copy of Systema naturae is Pæderota, a revision added after the publication of the 1762–63 edition of Species plantarum (figure 4). Martyn often cited Species plantarum on the labels attached to the herbarium specimens, alongside Systema naturae and Hortus Upsaliensis. These notations relate to his own copy of Species plantarum (1762–63), a book interleaved with large sheets of paper and bound into three volumes. As Miller did with Systema naturae, Martyn used Species plantarum to update references and add descriptive information. In the case of Pæderota, Martyn cross-referenced this text with a description from Linnaeus's Amoenitates Academicæ.Footnote ⁹⁹

To align the Linnaean systematic arrangement with the garden's practical management, Charles Miller used an annotated copy of The Gardener's Dictionary, a book authored by his father, Philip Miller. Published just before the foundation of the Cambridge Botanic Garden in 1759, the edition Charles Miller annotated was produced prior to British naturalists’ full acceptance of the Linnaean system and binomial nomenclature. The printed text continued to use earlier polynomial names.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ As this edition was produced, Philip Miller started to use Linnaean systematics, stating in its preface, “the new System of Botany, published by Dr. Linnaeus, was now more generally studied than any other.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ He acknowledged that Linnaean binomials “would soon be more known . . . than any other.” To integrate this book with the Linnaean system, Charles Miller annotated specific Linnaean names in the text's margins, linking descriptions on how to cultivate specimens with binomials published in Species plantarum (1762–63).Footnote ¹⁰²

The ability to cross-reference Linnaean binomials with Philip Miller's Gardeners Dictionary united the systematic and practical management of the garden. This was crucial for understanding the properties of specific species, providing the framework to fulfil Richard Walker's original intent “that one trial should be made yearly upon a certain number of these plants.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Miller concentrated his experiments on species arranged under the genus Triticum, commonly known as wheat.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The agricultural potential of wheat and related species was of particular importance to Martyn, Miller, the sons of the landed gentry, and the prospective priests who attended the botanical lectures. These interests gave Miller a clear incentive to undertake experiments on wheat. In 1768, he communicated an account of his experiments to the London physician and Linnaean proponent William Watson, describing how “one grain of wheat only, in little more than a year” produced “a much more considerable quantity of grain, than was ever attempted, or ever conjectured possible.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ These experiments on increasing yields were intended to promote agricultural improvement, following a long tradition in Cambridge botany. In 1725, Richard Bradley, the first professor of botany, had stressed the usefulness of a botanic garden when performing “Experiments tending to the improvement of land, which may be a means of increasing the estate of every man in England.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Agricultural experiments, however, remained a secondary priority in the Cambridge Botanic Garden. The main interest of Martyn and successive curators was to gather species to show the diversity of God's creation. This is represented through the first catalogue of the garden, Martyn's Catalogus Horti Botanici Cantabrigiensis (1771), a systematic list of every species in the garden.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Martyn arranged the Catalogus according to the Linnaean system, making it possible for attendees of his lectures to locate, identify, and compare different plants. Martyn's Catalogus was compiled from a Linnaean list of binomial names and systematic diagnoses, often condensed descriptions of plants present in the Cambridge Botanic Garden. A year later, Martyn published a short appendix, Mantissa Plantarum, listing new species accessioned into the garden since the publication of the Catalogus.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ These systematic catalogues required access to large library collections from which Martyn gathered supportive references; hence the long borrowing times for books from Sidney Sussex College library in the late 1760s.

Martyn's Catalogus and Mantissa were the first in a series of catalogues designed to inventory the garden's global collection, and their publication was followed by several improvements to the garden and museum to facilitate the addition of tropical plants. In 1775, Martyn was granted £100 to “alter and enlarge the Stove, to repair the Greenhouse and to do several other necessary works.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Extensions to the greenhouse allowed the cultivation of a greater range of exotic species, and the museum was likewise renovated to increase its capacity.Footnote ¹¹⁰ To ensure the incorporation of new species into the Linnaean information-management system, Martyn had one copy of his Catalogus interleaved with blank pages, to be annotated with new names and descriptions as material was received from across the globe (figure 5).Footnote ¹¹¹ This practice was similar to that employed by Linnaeus and his son, who kept an interleaved copy of Hortus Upsaliensis (1748). Linnaeus's volume listed all the species held by the Uppsala Botanic Garden, and the annotations named and described species added to the garden.Footnote ¹¹² Martyn was familiar with these practices and had been using an interleaved copy of his father's Methodus Plantarum Circa Cantabrigiam (1727) since the 1750s,Footnote ¹¹³ a book he carried on excursions across Cambridgeshire, using the blank pages to add information on specific species.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Figure 5

Thomas Martyn's interleaved copy of Catalogus Horti Botanici Cantabrigiensis (1771), Copy 3, Cory Library, Cambridge Botanic Garden. Martyn used the interleaved pages to insert descriptions of tropical species acquired since the building of the greenhouse in 1772. Reproduced with permission of the Cory Library, Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Martyn's annotations in the interleaved Catalogus concerned species sourced from a global network and cultivated in Cambridge after the completion of the greenhouses. To facilitate their management, he developed a key relating to the life cycle and location of the plants: “A” for annual, “P” for perennial, “B” for biennial, “H” for hardy, “GH” for greenhouse, “S” for stove, “Sh” for shrubbery, and “T” for tree.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Those species described in the printed text had been present in the collection since the 1760s, when Charles Miller was curator, and were keyed to “HP,” indicating perennials and hardy biennials. In contrast, many species described in Martyn's annotations had to be kept in the new greenhouse and stove house to ensure their survival. These included Protea conifera, a species endemic to the Western Cape, Canna glauca from North America, and Justicia hyssopifolia from the Canary Islands;Footnote ¹¹⁶ specimens of them were represented in Martyn's herbarium. Many annotations on the interleaved pages include the key “GH.P,” indicating that these species are perennial so long as they are kept in the greenhouse. One plant described on an interleaved page is Ixia crocata, which originated from the Cape of Good Hope. Next to this annotation, Martyn added references to Linnaeus's Species plantarum (1762–63), Philip Miller's Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants (1755), and William Aiton's Hortus Kewensis (1789).Footnote ¹¹⁷

Martyn's citations of Linnaeus's and Miller's works were central to the cross-referencing of published names, descriptions, illustrations, specimens, and living examples held by the garden and museum. Many names of species, including Ixia crocata, were accompanied by a network of references giving mutual support to the note, cross-referencing the Linnaean description with an illustration commissioned by Miller, who first cultivated this species in the Chelsea Physic Garden after receiving seeds from the Cape.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Miller commissioned the image of Ixia crocata from the German botanical illustrator and engraver John Miller (also known as Johann Sebastian Müller), and it depicts the flowers, showing the sexual organs in particular detail. The number of pistils and stamens supported Linnaeus's published name, description, and placement of this species in the genus Ixia and the class Triandria, an arrangement Martyn emulated in his Catalogus.Footnote ¹¹⁹ References to the published illustrations and descriptions were further supported by the dried specimen in Martyn's herbarium and the living plant kept in the greenhouses (figure 6).Footnote ¹²⁰ These four reference points provided the mix of composite images and specific examples necessary to support the classification of the species.Footnote ¹²¹ The descriptions, specimens, and archetypal illustrations were used to examine the plant when it was not flowering—an event that, according to Martyn's annotation, took place only between May and June after the main university terms had ended and few students were present in Cambridge.Footnote ¹²²

Figure 6

Left: Illustration of Ixia crocata from Philip Miller's Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants (1755), S.370.bb.76.1, Rare Books, CUL. The Ixia crocata is referred to by Martyn in the annotated Catalogus (1771) now held by the Cory Library, Cambridge Botanic Garden. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Right: The specimen that represents the species Ixia crocata from Martyn's herbarium, CGE00008339, Cambridge University Herbarium. Reproduced by kind permission of Cambridge University Herbarium, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.

The reference to Aiton's Hortus Kewensis (1789) reflects the integration of practices used to gather specimens for the Cambridge Botanic Garden with those of Kew Gardens from the early 1770s. Cambridge became a beneficiary of numerous seeds, bulbs, and plants sent out from Kew, repurposing them to integrate botany with natural theology. Hortus Kewensis had a similar purpose to Martyn's Catalogus, listing in its first edition 5,500 species present at Kew. Aiton employed a key similar to that used by Martyn, defining the life cycle, preferred climatic conditions, and size of plants.Footnote ¹²³ The close structural and systematic links between Martyn's Catalogus and Aiton's Hortus Kewensis illustrate how the use of the Linnaean system facilitated the production of published catalogues while providing a framework that allowed institutions to exchange material and information. This increased the number of species held in Kew and Cambridge, sharing the proceeds of a whole range of networks and the patronage of powerful figures such as Banks, Lord Bute, and Aiton, Kew's first director.Footnote ¹²⁴

The process of managing information became the responsibility of the garden's curator. In 1778, Martyn was replaced as curator, although not professor, by John Salton, who relied on a similar array of annotated books. Salton annotated Martyn's interleaved copy of the Catalogus, adding numerous names, descriptions, and geographical origins of species entering the garden. Examples include Nolana prostrata, a hardy annual originating in Peru that flowers between July and September in the northern hemisphere.Footnote ¹²⁵ Another is Morus papyferia, which Salton described as the “Paper Mulberry,” originating from “Japan and the South Seas Isles.”Footnote ¹²⁶ Its inclusion reflects the increased interest in the Pacific that began at the time of Martyn's survey of Banks's collection in 1771. Pacific travelers had emphasized Morus's economic potential and its use to produce bark cloth, often known as tapa, by Indigenous groups in Polynesia. However, Salton only identified this species, indicating that its economic importance was not a primary concern in Cambridge. Rather, Salton was interested in extending the garden's holdings of Pacific flora in conformity with the theological intent of showing the extent of God's creation.

The interleaved Catalogus was also used to record and classify numerous specimens that Martyn sent to Cambridge during his grand tour of Europe between 1779 and 1781. In accessioning them into the collection, Salton recorded whether the species were cultivated in the garden or accessioned as herbarium specimens. For example, on accessioning Cacalia hastrata, which Martyn collected near the Swiss glacier of Grindelwald on 3 August 1779, Salton added the name and diagnoses of this species to the Catalogus while keying it “H.P.,” for hardy perennial.Footnote ¹²⁷ Salton's notes show that he cultivated this species in the botanic garden and added representative specimens to the herbarium.Footnote ¹²⁸ The increased prevalence of Salton's hand in the Catalogus and Garden Audit Book reflects the broader changes taking place in natural history from the 1780s, as Linnaean practices of recording, ordering, and organizing information lost their prestige and were relegated to clerical work.Footnote ¹²⁹

Salton used both his and Martyn's annotations in the interleaved Catalogus to publish another catalogue in 1794, the anonymous Horti Botanici Cantabrigiensis Catalogus.Footnote ¹³⁰ However, unlike Martyn's Catalogus, Salton's Horti Botanici is a simple checklist of Linnaean binomial names, omitting any information on the physical placement of species in the garden, preferred climatic conditions, and common names. The binomials are all based on those given by Linnaeus in Species plantarum and are listed according to the Linnaean system, divided by subheadings outlining the Linnaean classes and orders, with the generic names listed on the left-hand side of the page. Salton's use of the single binomial shows his interest in linking the printed catalogue with the labels on the living plants in the garden and sheets of dried specimens in the herbarium collection, using print to connect the collections through the Linnaean system.

Salton was replaced in 1794 by James Donn, who curated the garden until his death in 1813. Donn had trained with Aiton at Kew, further solidifying the links between the two institutions. In 1796 the trustees “agreed . . . that an application be made to the Syndics of the [University] Press to Print a Catalogue of the Botanic Garden & to allow the Gardener the Profits of the sale as an Encouragement of his Diligence.”Footnote ¹³¹ Later that year, Donn published the first edition of Hortus Cantabrigiensis, another list of species held in the garden, a book that went through seven editions in his lifetime.Footnote ¹³² Donn's Hortus sat somewhere between Martyn's Catalogus and Salton's Horti Botanici. Although he omitted descriptions, Donn did include information on species’ preferred climatic conditions, geographical provenance, annual life cycles, medicinal applications, and seasonality and whether they were shrubs or trees.Footnote ¹³³

Donn solidified the relationship with Kew in the preface to Hortus Cantabrigiensis, dedicating the book “to the Hortus Kewensis of the late Mr. William Aiton, his excellent Master and one of the best Friends.”Footnote ¹³⁴ By the late 1790s, Kew and several nurseries near London and Newcastle were a main source of exotic species for the Cambridge Botanic Garden, with Donn acknowledging “his Majesty's Botanic Gardener at Kew” as supplying “many rare and curious Species” from across the empire. The numerous editions of Hortus Cantabrigiensis recorded the continuing influx of new material from Kew and various nurseries.Footnote ¹³⁵ In editing these catalogues, Donn revised the arrangement of plants alongside changes to the Linnaean system, based on purchases of the most recent Linnaean systematic works. These included a copy of Johann Friedrich Gmelin's edition of Linnaeus's Systema naturae, its two volumes costing the university £1/10/0 in 1797, expenses Donn recorded in the garden's audit book.Footnote ¹³⁶ By 1812, he was using the new edition of Species plantarum (1797–1818) edited by Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), director of the Berlin Botanic Garden. In the preface to Hortus Cantabrigiensis, Donn noted, “In his arrangement the Editor has followed (except in a few instances) Willdenow's Species Plantarum, and has marked with an asterisk the Plants described in that work.”Footnote ¹³⁷ By the early nineteenth century, Willdenow's Species plantarum had become central to the process of communicating botanical knowledge between British botanical collections, connecting the Cambridge Botanic Garden with institutions such as Kew Gardens and the private collections administered by Banks.Footnote ¹³⁸

The production and annotation of catalogues embody the practices developed to cope with the continual accession of new species. The interleaved catalogues gathered information and provided codes to locate specific plants within the garden while linking these to published illustrations and herbarium specimens. The practice of keeping meticulous records was seen as a devotional activity, supplying evidence for the great chain of being—the notion that all matter was organized in a strict hierarchical structure.Footnote ¹³⁹ Advanced systems for managing information made the collection navigable, giving those with access to the garden the opportunity to explore God's providential design.

Access and Teaching

At the end of his Short Account of the Late Donation of a Botanic Garden to the University of Cambridge, Walker stated that the garden had been established “for the public Good.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰ However, the term public had very specific connotations in the 1760s. Although the garden was intended to benefit society through distributing knowledge of the extent and utility of God's creation to those attending botanical lectures, access to the institution itself remained limited. For much of the 1760s and 1770s, the only people who could access the garden were members of the university and colleges, the fifty or so students taking the botanical lecture course, and those who came supplied with letters of recommendation.Footnote ¹⁴¹ These access requirements mirrored those of many contemporary public institutions. Other institutional foundations in Cambridge included the “Public” or University Library, which had similar access rights.Footnote ¹⁴² In London, those wishing to visit the British Museum (which opened a year before the Cambridge Botanic Garden in 1759) had to make a request in writing to receive tickets, and once there were given a guided tour by one of the curators.Footnote ¹⁴³ Consultations of its books and manuscripts were limited to the members of the learned societies and those who bore letters of recommendation addressed to the librarian.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ In 1762, the museum employed Daniel Solander to design a Linnaean catalogue and open the natural history collection to the full range of British naturalists, although potential users were subjected to the same regulations as those wishing to use the library.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Access to the Cambridge Botanic Garden was granted only to non-university members who provided letters of recommendation addressed to the professor of botany. Writing to Martyn in 1770, the physician Thomas Gery Cullum (1741–1831) requested that a “Mr Dixon, the Bearer of this letter,” be shown around the garden, recommending Dixon as “one of the best Botanists.” Visitors remained under the constant supervision of the professor or curator or sometimes both. Cullum specifically asked Martyn to “shew him [Dixon] the Greenhouse” and “if you have a few hours leisure to walk about the Garden, you will be a better judge of his articles than I am.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Dixon's need to present this letter reflects the garden's limited accessibility in the 1760s and 1770s, when Martyn treated the garden, library, and museum in a manner similar to that of owners of private botanic gardens and natural history collections.

Martyn believed that private collections were at the pinnacle of British natural history during this period. In his Elements of Natural History (1775), he maintained, “Men of rank and fortune have the advancement of knowledge more such in their power than the mere Scholar. The science therefore of natural history is peculiarly fortunate in possessing two such men as Mr Pennant and Mr Banks; whose abilities and Industry prompt them to make use of these fortuitous advantages.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Martyn's confidence in the powerful networks of private collectors encouraged the integration of the botanic garden with global collecting enterprises administered by Banks and the zoologist Thomas Pennant (1726–1798). Martyn emulated practices common in private collections through his management of the garden, developing the institution through his private network and using books from his personal library. His connections with private collectors encouraged the accumulation of species from across these global collecting enterprises.

Martyn's interest in running the Cambridge Botanic Garden along similar lines to a private collection is reflected in his distribution of the Catalogus. Copies found their way only into the hands of Martyn's correspondents, students, and Cambridge college libraries.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ In a letter to Pulteney, Martyn emphasized that the Catalogus was not produced for general sale but was “intended wholly for the use of my pupils,” adding that the only other recipients were a few select friends.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The Catalogus was a private commission, financed by Martyn through donations to the garden, student fees, and subscriptions paid by Cambridge and London booksellers. Its mode of publication is representative of the private work undertaken by John Archdeacon, the printer for Cambridge University Press between 1766 and 1793, much of whose commissions consisted of pamphlets and books printed for university members.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Martyn's Catalogus represents a distinct form of genteel publishing that dominated late eighteenth-century natural history, with copies distributed only to a select group.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Martyn's publishing practices bonded a specific network developed through the selective distribution of other books such as Plantœ Cantabrigienses (1763). The first Linnaean account of the flora of Cambridgeshire, Martyn's Plantœ was presented only to attendees of the botanical expeditions associated with his lectures.Footnote ¹⁵²

For the first two decades of the garden's existence, Martyn ran it in a manner similar manner to that of a genteel natural history collector, gaining the trust of the numerous private collectors with the means to supply specimens and living plants from across already advanced global networks. However, in comparison to private collections—which Walker suggested “lasted no longer than the Collectors” due to “a want of public reception”—the Cambridge garden's longevity was assured through its connection to the university.Footnote ¹⁵³ Its use in teaching defined the garden as a “public” institution, its mission ultimately to benefit the “public good.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ In the early 1780s, however, its private nature began to change, owing to increased interest from students. In 1782 Martyn wrote to John Strange (1732–1799), the British envoy in Venice whom he had met during a grand tour commenced between 1779 and 1781, describing how natural history “gains ground at Cambridge and it will be hard indeed, if out of thirty, or thereabouts, whose curiosity is annually excited; one or two may not be found to follow it up, & make something of it. In our time, you know, it was a study scarce heard of among us; we were looked upon as no better than cockle-shell pickers, butterfly hunters and weed gatherers.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ The surge in interest Martyn witnessed in those wishing to take the botanical course was a drive that occurred more generally across British society after Cook's voyages, the popularization of the Linnaean system, and the rise of natural theology.

After Martyn's return to Cambridge following his grand tour, his course of botanical lectures became more popular. He added a range of specimens to the botanical museum and issued university notices advertising tours of the collection: “Mr. Martyn usually spends the morning in the Museum; and will be ready to give any previous information to those who design to attend his Lectures; as well as to exhibit the Specimens of Natural History, which he has collected in both Switzerland and Italy, both to his Pupils, and to such as have not leisure to go through his course.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Martyn had collected specimens as he traveled through France, Switzerland, and the Italian states in the company of his family and a student.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ He wrote to Pulteney, “I made a copious Hortus Siccus; collected a great variety of fossils; and sent over a large case of rare Alpine plants to the Botanic Garden at Cambridge.”Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Although his route was conventional (with the exception of the extended period in Switzerland), a main purpose was to collect natural history specimens.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ In comparison, other “grand tourists” tended to collect antiquities or renaissance artworks or commission baroque sculptures.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

Martyn publicized his journeys in a Sketch of a Tour through Swisserland (1787) and A Tour through Italy (1791).Footnote ¹⁶¹ In these two published accounts, Martyn described the process of collecting specimens in the Swiss valley of Grindelwald and his visits to numerous university botanic gardens. Visiting the University of Padua's botanic garden, he described it as “a very good one, and . . . arranged according to the system of Tournefort.”Footnote ¹⁶² He combined visits to botanic gardens with examinations of museums of art and antiquities, making contacts with fellow collectors with similar interests, including Strange in Venice, who facilitated the acquisition of natural history specimens and associated artworks. After Martyn's return to England, Strange wrote that he had acquired for him “one of [Giambattista] Pittoni's very best Pictures” depicting “the Presepio; with the Madonna & child St Joseph & angels.”Footnote ¹⁶³ Martyn intended this fine baroque painting to serve as an altarpiece in the newly renovated chapel of Sidney Sussex College.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Exchanges with figures such as Strange and botanical curators established the garden in a broader European network.

The use of the Linnaean system further increased access for students, botanists, and general groups. By the 1780s, the Linnaean arrangement of the garden was advertised in Cambridge guidebooks that could be purchased from local booksellers such as Deighton Bell and Merrill.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ By 1785, one guidebook noted that the “whole garden is accurately arranged according to the system of the celebrated Linnæus, and a catalogue of all the plants has been published.”Footnote ¹⁶⁶ In addition to fulfilling the various theological interests of Cambridge professors, the Linnaean system made the collections more accessible to a general audience, as Martyn was well aware. He advised readers of his Letters on the Elements of Botany (1785), designed to be sold to a broad literate audience, that “the works of Linnæus alone will furnish you with all the knowledge you have occasion for.”Footnote ¹⁶⁷

By 1784, the museum had grown to such an extent that the original building was no longer sufficient to house the collection, and the university syndics agreed “to erect a Botanical & Chemical lecture room . . . the piece of Ground at the South East Corner of the Bot. Garden is a proper spot.”Footnote ¹⁶⁸ The new building provided more space for formal lectures as student numbers increased, and housed the botanical museum and library, an aspect of the collection Martyn had given more attention since John Salton's appointment as curator of the main garden in 1778.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Martyn wrote to Pulteney in 1783 that he had been “obliged to catalogue, arrange & pack up all my Museum; on account of the University pulling down my house.”Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Shortly after the demolition, the old mansion house was leased to the banker John Mortlock for £150, solving many of the Botanic Garden's financial problems. The new lecture room formalized the teaching of botany within the university framework, defining a site for the botanical museum and classes. It also brought the museum into the botanic garden, as it was now necessary to walk through the garden to attend lectures and view Martyn's collection.

Under the curatorship of James Donn in the 1790s, the botanic garden became more accessible. By 1804, Cambridge guidebooks outlined a few choice species that visitors could view: “Adjoining [the garden] is a Hot-house, furnished with stoves for preserving exotics, on the most improved construction. Among the exotics are a variety of singular trees and plants from New Holland; some tea, coffee, and breadfruit trees; a cotton tree, and many others of equal curiosity and value.”Footnote ¹⁷¹ This detailed description implies that possessors of the Cambridge guidebook could visit the garden and examine individual species in detail. Further evidence for this is apparent from the successive editions of Donn's Hortus Cantabrigiensis, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1796. Donn designed this volume “for the use of those Students in Botany who shall be disposed to inspect the productions of the WALKERIAN GARDEN,” adding that it was his intention “to satisfy the expectation of the Gentlemen of the University.”Footnote ¹⁷² Although the first edition was produced only for students and members of the university, the readership expanded with every new edition. By 1807, Donn noted that the “former Edition of this Catalogue, published in the Year 1804, was so rapidly sold out (the demand for it being so exceedingly great) it became necessary to reprint it.”Footnote ¹⁷³ Donn privately funded the production of new editions because of the strain it placed on Cambridge University Press, and by 1812 he noted that Hortus Cantabrigiensis “will be useful to the Public and acceptable.”Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The rapid sales reflect its distribution to those visiting the garden. Martyn had ceased lecturing late in the 1790s and now seldom visited Cambridge, but it was still possible to receive a tour from the curator, during which students and visitors had the opportunity to acquire a copy of Hortus Cantabrigiensis “sold by James Donn, Curator, at the Botanic Garden.”Footnote ¹⁷⁵ Throughout the 1810s and 1820s, many members of the reading public who visited the garden purchased Hortus Cantabrigiensis at the door and used it as a Linnaean guidebook.