In his eighteenth year he came to London with the immediate object of studying chemistry and botany, before he entered on other studies more distinctively medical. [Sidenote: EARLY STUDIES IN LONDON;] [Sidenote: 1677–1682.] He learned chemistry under STAPHORST,[47] and of botany he acquired a good deal of knowledge by frequenting, with much assiduity, the recently founded Botanical Garden at Chelsea. In the latter pursuit he met with assistance from the intelligent keeper of the garden, Mr. WATTS. [Sidenote: _MS. Corresp._] And ere long he acquired the friendship of John RAY, and of Robert BOYLE. After six years of steady educational labours, both scientific and medical, he went to Paris, which possessed in 1683—and long afterwards—facilities for medical education far superior to any that could then be found in London. [Sidenote: AND IN FRANCE.] [Sidenote: 1683–4.] His companions in the journey were Dr. Tancred ROBINSON and Dr. WAKELEY. SLOANE had scarcely got farther into France than the town of Dieppe, before it was his good fortune to make the acquaintance of Nicholas LEMERY, and to find himself able to communicate to that eminent chemist the results of some novel experiments. [Sidenote: _Eloge_, in _Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences_ (1753); and _MS. Correspondence_. (B. M.)] They journeyed together from Dieppe to Paris, and the acquaintance thus casually formed was productive of good to both of them. The studies begun in Ireland, and assiduously continued in London, were now matured in Paris under men of European fame. And the young botanist who heretofore could profit only by the infant garden established by the London apothecaries at Chelsea, and by an occasional botanizing ramble into the country, could now expatiate at will in the magnificent _Jardin des Plantes_ of the King of FRANCE. In that botanical university SLOANE, too, had TOURNEFORT—four years his senior—for his frequent companion and fellow-student. In July, 1683, he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in the University of Orange. Thence he went to Montpelier, where he resided until nearly the end of May, 1684. After visiting Bordeaux, and some other parts of France, he returned to Paris. There were few towns, in which he made any stay, that had not given him some friend or other, in addition to a valuable accession of knowledge. And the friendships he had once formed were but rarely lost.