198 THE PLANT WORLD. 



garden of plants. When Bufifon entered upon his duties there, 

 he found only an old sixteenth centur}- country-house with two 

 wings ; a few greenhouses and sheds ; the grounds of no great 

 extent, and hedged in and limited by a monastery. The Roval 

 Cabinet of Natural History consisted of two rooms, one for the 

 herbarium and one for the storage of medicinal plants. Buffon 

 at once suppressed the private apartments of the court physician, 

 who had a sort of countr}'-house in the garden, and afterward 

 he evicted himself as well. He arranged in order the collections 

 of natural objects, which }ear by year increased in interest, 

 rarit}' and beauty ; he entered into communication with naturalists 

 and travelers all over the earth, and created an order of corre- 

 spondents of the garden. There were thus introduced into the 

 garden the first hydrangea from China : the dahlia, the sweet- 

 acorned oak, the first plane-trees in France, and a quantity of 

 shrubs and flowers. 



Later, the greenhouses were remodeled, and the garden was 

 expanded through Bufifon's negotiations with the Abbot of the 

 neighboring monastery. And all the time that Bufl:on was at- 

 tending to every detail of administration in the garden he was 

 writing his great work, the " Histoire Xaturelle." 



Bufifon's successor at the Garden of Plants was the Marquis 

 de la Billarderie, a courtier who took an interest in nature and 

 science — after the fasion of the age. The new intendant ap- 

 parently regarded his post as a sinecure, resided at the Tuileries, 

 and scarcely occupied himself with the administration of the 

 garden, which was left in the care of Andre Thouin, the head 

 gardener, while the scientific management of the cabinets and 

 lectures was in the hands of Doctor Daubenton, who had been 

 the friend and co-worker of Bufi'on. While the Marquis de la 

 Billarderie was doing nothing, the doctor was laying plans for the 

 reorganization of the garden and cabinets as a museum of 

 natural history, and Andre Thouin was laying out the grounds in 

 beautiful mazes and gardens, making of the place the popular 

 resort it has ever since continued to be. " On the fine summer 

 nights of 1790 the Parisians used to stream across the bridge, 

 quitting Paris on the brink of revolution for this green paradise." 



