“MARTIS, 11 DIE JUNII, 1793.
“A petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College, under their common seal, was presented to the House and read, setting forth, that the Petitioners and their predecessors have for a long series of years used their best endeavours to promote the study and improve the faculty of Physic in said College, and considerable sums of money have been, and are annually and otherwise applied by them for that purpose.
“That an Act having passed in this kingdom for the establishment of a complete School of Physic, of which the University Professors make a part, namely, the Professors of Botany, Chemistry, and Anatomy, the petitioners, for the encouragement of science, and without obligation from the charter or statutes so to do, have continued to make a liberal provision for the support of those professorships; that a Botanic Garden is indispensably necessary for the success of that science, but the funds of said College are totally inadequate to the establishment or support of such an institution, they have exerted their utmost efforts to promote it by allocating for that purpose a fund, which in the last year amounted to £112, but which will be insufficient for the establishment or maintenance of such an institution; that the Legislature having been pleased to grant several sums of money to the Dublin Society towards providing and maintaining a Botanic Garden, that society caused application to be made to the petitioners for their advice, assistance, and contributions, and, as the petitioners are informed, applied to the College of Physicians for the like purposes, and the members of the College have, as far as in them lay, granted the annual sum of £100 for the purpose out of funds vested in them for medical purposes; the petitioners apprehend that by the application of the said several funds, and by the co-operation of a certain number of persons out of the said three bodies, the success of said scheme will be most effectually promoted; that the copy of a bill for these purposes having been laid before the petitioners, they are humbly of opinion that the said bill, if passed into a law, would tend to promote the success of the said institution, which they consider as necessary to a complete School of Physic, and useful to the University, and whatever regulations may be made in respect to the said establishment, they humbly hope that the wisdom of the Legislature will provide that medical and other students shall have the full benefit of it, the petitioners having nothing in view but their advantage, the success of said School of Physic, and the advancement of science.
“Ordered, that the said petition be referred to the committee of the whole House, to whom it was referred to take into consideration a Bill for directing the application of certain sums of money heretofore granted towards providing and maintaining a Botanic Garden, and for the appointment of trustees for that purpose.”[173]
A petition from the President and Fellows of the King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians in Dublin, under the common seal, was presented to the House and read, setting forth—
“That in the year 1758 the House was pleased to appoint a committee to inquire into the best means for the establishment of a complete School of Physic in this kingdom, and to refer a petition from the petitioners for that purpose to the said committee, before which several of said College were examined, who, on such examination, declared their opinion that a Botanic Garden was necessary to such an institution; and the said committee was pleased to enter into a resolution to that effect: that in the year 1790 the Legislature was pleased to grant to the Dublin Society, towards providing and maintaining a Botanic Garden, and the said society, &c.”[173]
It then proceeds in a manner similar to the petition from the College, and it was ordered for consideration with it. With what immediate result is not apparent; but on the 20th of June in the next year (1794) the Dublin Society petitioned the Irish House of Commons that “they might have the sole management of the sums granted by Parliament for the purposes of a Botanic Garden, and that such sums may not be invested in trustees contrary to the grant already made to it, and further, that no other body may be joined with said society in the execution of the trusts reposed in it.”
The influence of the Society proved to be stronger in the House of Commons than that of the University of Dublin or the College of Physicians, and the Dublin Society was intrusted with the sole management of the sums voted, and so the conjoint scheme ended. The Dublin Society, in February, 1792, had appointed a Committee, consisting of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Lord Bishop of Kilmore, Sir W. G. Newcomen, S. Hayes, Th. Burgh, And. Caldwell, and Col. C. Eustace, with powers to take ground for a Botanical Garden for the Society; and on the decision of the House of Commons being known, the Society, on the 26th February, 1795, took possession of sixteen acres of ground near the “town of Glasnevin, which Major Tickell held by a Toties Quoties Lease from the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church.”
In July, 1806, the Board of Trinity College took a lease of a small piece of ground near Ball’s Bridge, about a mile from the College, containing over three acres; in 1832 they acquired about two acres adjoining in addition, alongside the Pembroke Road. In 1848 about two acres more as a shelter belt along the Lansdowne Road were added, so that the garden now consists of something more than eight acres in all. The first-mentioned plot was surrounded by a high wall, and in 1807 the laying out of the ground was commenced by the newly-appointed Curator, J. T. Mackay. Some twenty years after, we find Mackay writing as follows about “several foreign plants naturalised under the climate of Ireland, chiefly in these gardens”:—
“The College Botanic Garden, which was established in 1807, is situated on the Black Rock road about half-a-mile from Dublin. The soil is a deep sandy loam.