THE JARDIX DES TLANTES. 1 97 



there by a twy-peaked monticule (not unlike the Dane — John at Canter- 

 bury), planted with a labyrinth of cedars and evergreen trees, some of them 

 old and fine. Everyone knows the Jardin des Plantes and has felt its 

 superannuated charm, composed of mouldy retirement and popular de- 

 light. That part of it which butts on the Latin Quarter, with its cedared 

 mount and bronze temple, and a certain homely grace in its eighteenth- 

 century buildings (of which not "a few remain), is pleasant with its plots 

 of wild flowers and clumps of peonies among the grass. From this end, 

 right in front of the handsome modern buildings which house the natural 

 history collections, an avenue of lime-trees sweeps across the flat to the 

 river, dividing on either hand the world of beasts and the world of plants." 



The Jardin des Plantes was founded by Richelieu. It was then 

 a garden for the study of medicinal herbs — for botany was then 

 regarded merely as a branch of medicine — under the direction of 

 the king's physician, Guy de la Brosse. He was succeeded by a 

 line of court doctors with no peculiar turn for science, and the 

 garden " dwindled to a desert of dust and disorder." The genera- 

 tion of Louis XIV paid scant attention to the herb garden. They 

 sought Nature rather in the relation between star and star, fol- 

 lowing the lead of Descartes and Rottsseau in France and- Hobbes 

 in England. 



" With Newton they dropped from the cosmic rush of Hobbes and 

 Descartes to the grass of that orchard where Sir Isaac's apple fell ; they 

 rose, with something of a shake, and began to look about them. These 

 humble forms of Nature, after all, are interesting and even pretty ! And 

 the second quarter of the eighteenth century in France inaugurated a race 

 of botanists and students of natural history, who one day turned their 

 attention to the long-neglected Jardin des Plantes, began to dream of the 

 chemistry of vegetable life and to turn their attention to the organic 

 structure of a substance which hitherto they had chiefly cultivated as 

 herbs to dry in bunches, or grains to bray in a mortar. 



"It was in 1732; Dr. Chicoisneau, the king's phj-sician, had just died, 

 leaving behind him a wilderness, a little east of Paris. The Academic des 

 Sciences rose to the occasion, and. pointing out the scandalous state of 

 things, suggested that the post be taken from the hands of the doctors 

 and confided to a man of science. The chemist, Dufay, an academician 

 and a student of Newton, was chosen as director. A man of forty years 

 of age, he was full of plans and projects when, suddenly stricken by a 

 fatal illness, on his deathbed he designated as his successor Buffon." 



From 1739 until his death in 1788, Georges Leclerc de Buffon 

 reigned supreme as " Intendant dit Jardin et du Cabinet du Roi." 

 During those fifty years the garden remained, as it had been, a 



