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The active gardener. 



who is a Scotchman named Baxter^ devotes his attention chiefly to 

 the Cryptogamia ; partly from mortification at finding it impossible 

 to make the garden such as he could wish. He is preparing a Flora 

 Cryptogamica of the environs of Oxford ; and he showed us the first 

 number of this work, containing specimens very neatly laid out, to 

 which we must invite the attention of our countrymen in Germany. 

 Mr. Baxter also cultivates with zeal the English Willows, havino; 

 a living individual of almost every species, in a proper Salice- 

 turn. To the Grasses, likewise, he gives much attention ; and, from 

 the experience of several years, he is enabled to decide that Agrosfis 

 verticillata, vulgaris, decumbens, fasciculata (Curt.), and stolonifera, 

 are distinct species ; which, when subjected to the same culture for 

 a great length of time, still continue to preserve their characteristic 

 marks. This industrious man, — with the assistance of three persons, 

 each of whom receives two shillings per day,— cultivates between 

 four and five thousand species of plants' in the wretched houses of 

 this garden, though in fact there is only one stove, properly so called, 

 and this is much too small. Those which grow in the open air are, 

 like the plants of Cambridge, arranged agreeably to the Linnsean 

 method, and separated into the indigenous and foreign kinds ; and 



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both of these are again divided into annual, biennial, and perennial, 

 by which the study of the alhed species becomes difiicult. They 

 are partly cultivated in beds, partly in separate squares ; without 

 any view to the effect which this must naturally offer to the eye- 



Although the Oxford Garden is inadequate to the purposes of 

 botanical instruction in the present state of science, and though the 

 excellent Dr. Williams has been prevented from lecturing this yeat 

 by the weakness of his sight, it yet possesses, in the Library which 

 has been judiciously added to it, a treasure which no other institution 

 of the kind can boast, namely, the Herbarium and MSS.of Dillenius 

 and of Sherard, with the collection of books that had belonged to 

 these two Conjphi. Tlie first contains almost all the original 

 specimens of Cryptogamia, figured by Dillenius in his work which 

 is now become very scarce ; and they are in very good preservation. 

 Perhaps Professor Williams will give us a new edition, with authen- 



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tic and accurate copies of the plates in this typographical rarity ; 

 and add to them the marHnal notes of Dillenius. William Sherard 





