106 Museum of Natural History at Paris. 



has been asked often, and anxiously, how a mere inferior 

 officer (employe), economising on his slender salary, con- 

 trived to make a collection which at his death sold for 

 60,000 fr., whilst the corresponding collection in the museum, 

 with the advantage of its superior reputation, is not valued 

 at 10,000 fr. Still the state is so generous as to allow this 

 establishment the sums required; and we have heard, in the 

 Chamber, the amount and the unhappy expenditure of these 

 grants made with a readiness deserving a better use. It has 

 been there noticed that the new gallery of mineralogy had 

 been built in such a manner, that half the specimens will be 

 hidden from public view. We have before remarked in what 

 spirit the plan of the green-houses was drawn. Now, the 

 tenth of this sum would have been enough to enrich and class 

 each collection in the most ample manner. 



The garden has a professor of agriculture, who neither 

 does nor can profess agriculture ; and a division of agricul- 

 ture, which could not serve for demonstrations ; for I doubt 

 if a plough or a drill could turn at the end of a furrow 

 without breaking the trelliswork. More especially it has a 

 school of botany, and green-houses where the tyranny of the 

 professors grudges more and more to independent study the 

 small advantages which custom and the indefatigable com- 

 plaisance of the inferior officers had hitherto secured to 

 authors. Hitherto, the gate of the green-houses had been 

 open to us, as well as that of the enclosures : this has all been 

 changed this year, at the will of a man whom, we grant, our 

 work had not flattered. Presenting ourselves, as usual, at a 

 time when a plant was in flower which it was needful in the 

 course of our work to analyse, an attendant ran to request 

 our immediate departure, as we were not in possession of a 

 ticket of admission, such as had been voted necessary by the 

 professors, at the request of the official owner of the green- 

 houses. Some days after, three of these tickets were procured 

 for us, signed by the professor himself, with a request that we 

 would not visit the beds unaccompanied by a gardener. We 

 cast back these impertinences to the administration, and had 

 recourse to other complaisance than that which the state 

 fancies it is paying in the interests of students. 



Now, it has been decided that a mere gardener has the right 

 of gathering whoJe bouquets in these green-houses : the pro- 

 fessor covers his chimney-piece with them. It has been de- 

 cided, also, that a student has the right to examine a flower 

 on the spot, and even to carry home a certain number of 

 specimens for his private study ; so that the condition annexed 

 to this permission was a gratuitous insult, and a mode of shut- 



