182 BOTANICAL INFORMATION, 
professor of descriptive botany, who conducts also botanical excursions, 
as well as exercises in determining plants. Of these three gentlemen, 
the first is a tolerably good botanist, well acquainted with the pro- 
gress and literature of the science, and, although past forty years of age, 
is still full of youthful ardour and attachment to botany, and devoted 
to it from his youth, from inclination. 
The botanical museum is placed under the immediate direction 
of Cutanda. It comprises—besides the agronomical branch already 
alluded to, consisting of a library and a collection of models, woods, 
cerealia, and fruits—the botanical library, the herbariums, and the 
store of seeds. The library, which is well arranged, is seemingly 
complete as regards the older works; but it is poor in more recent 
publications, The Seed-store is arranged according to the Linnæan 
system, and has an especial seed-collector (semillero), who gathers 
the seeds in the garden, and distributes them among other gardens. 
He stands under Cutanda, who is the director of the garden of Madrid, 
only as regards corresponding with other gardens, which are connected 
with it by exchanging seeds, superintending generally the garden culti- 
vation, and enriching it with new species; but he has nothing to 
do with the cultivation itself. "The herbariums constitute the most 
important portion of the botanical museum; those of Cavanilles, 
Rodriguez, Née, Clemente, part of the collections of Lagasca, Pourret, 
and others, being kept there; likewise many plants of Boissier and 
Reuter, some gathered by the writer of this notice, and by several of the 
pupils of the botanical institution. All these collections were lying in 
the greatest confusion in Rodriguez's time, so that it was utterly im- 
possible to compare any plant, or examine any particular original speci- 
men. Cutanda has made it a point of primary importance to intro- 
duce some order into this chaos, after four years of constant exertion, 
aided by the semillero, Don Francisco Alea, a young, zealous, and 
clever botanist. Allthe said collections form now one general herbarium, 
of about 30,000 species, arranged according to De Candolle's method. 
The specimens of each species, in the several herbariums, are placed 
separately in sheets of paper, having a printed label with the name of 
the herbarium attached ; and a detailed catalogue renders the search 
after any particular species very easy. Cutanda is now e in 
determining all the species in this general herbarium, from first to last, 
' because there are many plants in it, either not at all, or wrongly named. 
