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PART IV. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Natural History in Foreign Countries. 



FRANCE. 



Paris, Oct. 9. — Comparing Paris and London, with respect to wealth 

 and population, the taste for natural history is much greater among the 

 instructed classes, and more generally diffused among tradesmen and shop- 

 keepers, in the former city, than in the latter. Perhaps the original cause 

 of this difference, like the original cause of most of the permanent differ- 

 ences in mankind, may be traced to climate. France naturally produces 

 finer flowers than England, and admits also of a greater variety of enjoy- 

 ments in the open air. To the climate, therefore, may probably be traced 

 the love of showy and odoriferous flowers, and of singing birds ; the esta- 

 blishment in Paris of a flower-market, far superior to any thing of the kind in 

 England ; and of the market for singing birds, which we have not in England 

 at all. It may be said that what is sold in the flower and bird markets in 

 Paris, is, in London, sold in shops, and in the green-houses in the King's 

 Road : but this is not the fact ; independently of the bird-market, the num- 

 ber of bird-shops in Paris is many times greater than in London ; and 

 though there are more rare plants and forced roses and flowers to be 

 seen in Mr. Colville's green-house in winter, than in any one green-house 

 or shop in Paris at that season, yet the aggregate number of forced flowers 

 in Paris is greater, and the plants and flowers are not purchased almost ex- 

 clusively by the rich, for display at parties, as in London. In short, in Paris, 

 orange trees in boxes and showy and odoriferous flowers are, comparatively, 

 a necessary of life. It may be sufficient to mention that sprigs of orange 

 trees, in blossom, are introduced generally in nosegays throughout the winter, 

 and flowers of tuberoses as generally in summer. Cut flowers and flowering 

 plants in pots are also common in churches, especially during religious 

 fetes. 



The menagery in the Jardin des Plantes, and the rich and extensive col- 

 lections in the museum of the same establishment, it may easily be conceived, 

 have contributed to the taste for, and knowledge of, zoology, in persons of 

 leisure, and we have no doubt that the same effect, and to an extent greater in 

 proportion to the wealth and intelligence of the mass of society, will be pro- 

 duced by the gardens of the Zoological Society of London. We should like 

 to see the whole of the Regent's Park studded with the habitations of speci- 

 mens of all the animals in the world, and dotted, grouped, and massed, with 

 reference, at the same time, to picturesque beauty and the system of Jussieu, 

 with all the hardy trees and shrubs that will endure the open air in our 

 climate. Plants of the green-house and hot-house might be planted in the 

 open ground (now occupied as a nursery), in the circular plot in the centre 

 of the park, which might be covered with a glass roof supported on lofty 

 columns, and the proper temperature kept up by lakes of hot water, and 

 masses of I'ock heated by concealed fires. Here the botany and zoology of 



Vol. I. —No. 4. d d 



