14 ESSAYS. 
as well as by the collections of travelers, this herbarium is 
rendered unusually rich in the botany of this country; while 
Drummond’s Texan collections, and many contributions from 
Mr. Nuttall and others, very fully represent the flora of our 
southern and western confines. That these valuable mate- 
rials have not been buried, or suffered to accumulate to no 
purpose or advantage to science, the pages of the “ Flora 
Boreali-Americana,” the ‘ Botanical Magazine,” the “ Botani- 
eal Miscellany,” the ‘ Journal of Botany,” the “ Icones Plan- 
tarum,”’ and other works of this industrious botanist, abun- 
dantly testify ; and no single herbarium will afford the student 
of North American botany such extensive aid as that of Sir 
William Hooker. 
The herbarium of Dr. Arnott of Arlary, although more 
especially rich and authentic in East Indian plants, is also 
interesting to the North American botanist, as well for the 
plants of the ‘“ Botany of Captain Beechey’s Voyage,” etc., 
published by Hooker and himself, as the collections of Drum- 
mond and others, all of which have been carefully studied by 
this sagacious botanist. 
The most important botanical collection in Paris, and, in- 
deed, perhaps the largest in the world, is that of the Royal 
Museum at the Jardin des Plantes or Jardin du Roi. We 
cannot now devote even a passing notice to the garden and _ 
magnificent new conservatories of this noble institution, much 
less to the menagerie and celebrated museum of zoology and 
anatomy, of the cabinet of mineralogy, geology, and fossil re- 
mains, which, newly arranged in a building recently erected 
for its reception, has just been thrown open to the public. 
The botanical collections occupy a portion of this new build- 
ing. A large room on the first floor, handsomely fitted up 
with glass cases, contains the cabinet of fruits, seeds, sections 
of stems, and curious examples of vegetable structure from 
every part of the known world. Among them we find an in- 
teresting suite of specimens of the wood, and another com- 
prising the fruits, or nuts, of nearly all the trees of this coun- 
try; both collected and prepared by the younger Michaux. 
The herbaria now occupy a large room or hall, immediately 
