Natural History in Foreign Countries, 481 



well ; they are not planted in peat earth, as in England, but in rotten, 

 wood, mixed with common garden soil. Andromeda arborea has attained 

 the size of a tree, and ripens seeds every year ; Dlrca palustris is large, and 

 has also perfected seeds, from which plants have been raised. Many other 

 interesting particulars we omit, as belonging rather to gardening than 

 natural history: but we must notice a very extensive collection of seeds,; 

 perhaps 1000 species, in small flat crystal bottles, conspicuously arranged 

 and named ; and a collection of woods, indigenous and exotic, perhaps 

 100 species, each specimen in the form of a book, lettered on the back, and 

 placed in a bookcase. In the green-house of this garden, as in that of the 

 botanic garden of Heidelberg, plants of Vallisneria spirMis, male and female,- 

 are kept for the purpose of illustrating the sexual system. 



In the centre of the principal green-house there is a fountain, and over 

 it a large wire cage, containing a collection of hardy singing birds, which, 

 when those parts of the windows that are opened for air are covered with 

 wire netting, are allowed to fly about the house ; but as they are only fed 

 in the cage, or rather wire tent, they always return to it, and are easily re- 

 eDclosed. In the bark bed of the stove, M. Harsweg, who is a great lover 

 of insects, inserts the eggs of ^carabae'us nasicornis lAn.y a singular-looking 

 beetle, in the beginning of February : the perfect insects appear in the 

 course of the summer, and in the evening fly about the garden, and add to 

 the variety of twilight sounds and insect forms. The eggs, unlike those of 

 the common cockchafFer, which require upwards of a year to become per- 

 fect insects, are perfected in the course of three or four months. He has 

 not found that this beetle does harm to any thing, though he has found the 

 common Rose Cockchaffer, in its winged state, attack and eat ripe pine- 

 apples. He also observed that the S. nasicornis, or the Horned Cock- 

 chaffer, frequently deposited its eggs in soft earth and rotten dung in the 

 open air, but that they were always destroyed by the winter frost ; so that 

 there is no danger of their being naturalised in Germany. Those who wish 

 to try this experiment, may procure the eggs, as well as those of a number 

 of other curious insects, from, or through, M. Cels, nurseryman, Mont- 

 rouge, Paris. 



Koelreuter (known to botanists by his name-plant, Koelreuteria panicu- 

 Ikta), who was formerly professor of botany here, is said to have made a 

 great many observations on the pollen of plants. The Chevalier Zeyer, the 

 garden-director of Schwetzingen, a scientific and ardent botanist, who has 

 formed and collected a herbarium of upwards of 20,000 species, informs 

 us that he has seen drawings, by Koelreuter, of the magnified particles of 

 pollen, of upwards of 2000 genera ; that Professor Koelreuter considered 

 that every genus that was truly distinct had a distinct form of pollen, and 

 that the magnified figures of the ultimate particles of pollen would probably 

 be found the most definite of all generic distinctions. The drawings are in 

 the hands of his son, a physician here, who, it is regretted by M. Zeyer, 

 does not communicate them to the public, or state his reasons for with- 

 holding them. 



We have brought away from Carlsruhe one live J?ana arborea, not being 

 able to procure a second or third individual ; plants of Vallisneria, a genus 

 which, we believe, is not yet introduced into England ; and, as souvenirs. 

 Wistaria Consequana, Andromeda arborea, and Dirca palustris, raised from 

 seeds ripened at Carlsruhe^ We hope we shall be more successful with Val- 

 lisneria than we were with Salvinia natans in 1819, which we succeeded in 

 bringing from Lago Oscuro to Paris, but lost there, by placing it, floating 

 in a vessel of water, on the outside of our chamber window, whence it could 

 only be taken by sparrows or swallows. The grief and pain of disappoint- 

 ment that we experienced on this occasion, can only be understood by those 

 who have liad a similar trial, or who know, from reasoning and reflection. 



