The complete online text of The Botanic Garden. Part II. by Erasmus Darwin.

The grandfather of evolutionist Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a prominent English physician and poet whose interests included biology, botany, and technology. Darwin was born December 12, 1731, at Elston Hall, near Newark, in the county...

Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who had a significant influence on the development of theories of evolution. In particular, he helped to initiate the idea that traits developed by an organism during its life could somehow be passed on to its offs...

For the first fifty-seven years of his life Erasmus Darwin worked hard as a physician in the Midland counties of England and earned the highest reputation as a doctor. He was also an ingenious experimenter in physical science, a compulsive inventor of me...

When the graceful but rickety Palm House was taken down in 1992 at the U.S. Botanic Garden, the dismantling was viewed with hope rather than dismay: It would lead to a restoration and modernization of the historic institution on the southeast corner of the...

ART AND SCIENCE often go hand in hand, but seldom so splendidly as in the flower paintings now gracing the Rotunda Gallery of the National Museum of Natural History. Technically the paintings are botanical illustrations, and while they are technically superb, they're also...