CHAP. III. CONTINENT OF EUROPE. 143 
press Josephine, to spread a taste for exotic trees and shrubs, and the form- 
ation of ornamental plantations. He was born in 1746, at the Chateau de 
Courset in the Haut Boulonnais. After having received an excellent educa- 
tion, he entered the army at the age of 17 years, and was soon after sent on duty 
to Languedoc, where the plants of the Pyrenees gave birth to his enthusiastic 
taste for botany. In 1784 he left the army, and devoted himself wholly to 
the improvement of his estate at Courset, where, in a short time, he formed 
by far the richest collection of plants in France, and created an establishment 
which ranked at that time with the gardens of Malmaison, Kew, &c. In an 
arid chalky soil, so unproductive as to be called a desert, M. Du Mont created 
an excellent kitchen-garden, a large orchard, and an ornamental garden de- 
voted to the culture of foreign plants. These gardens will be found described 
in the Annales de la Société d’ Horticulture de Paris, tom. xiv.; and in the Gar- 
dener’s Magazine, vol. xii., from our personal inspection. It may be sufficient 
to state, that, though these gardens do not display fine turf, water, or fine 
gravel, yet they are of intense interest in point of culture; and hat the col- 
lection of hardy trees and shrubs, which have attained a considerable size, is 
not surpassed by any in the neighbourhood of London, in regard to the 
number of species which it contains. The coilection of herbaceous plants is 
formed into a series of concentric beds. The trees and shrubs are disposed 
in groups, according to the season of the year at which they flower, as sug- 
gested by Du Hamel; but these groups are so thinly planted that room is left 
for each tree and shrub to acquire its natural size and form. There is an ex- 
tensive collection of fruit trees, including all the varieties that could be pro- 
cured in Europe and America. The peat-earth plants are numerous, as are 
the hot-house and green-house plants. The hot-houses are 200 ft. and the 
pits 150 ft. in length. In the year 1789 M. Du Mont visited the principal 
gardens in the neighbourhood of London, and, on his return to his family, was 
immediately arrested and imprisoned by the government; but he was as 
promptly set at liberty through the influence with the Committee of Public 
Safety of his friend, the celebrated Professor Thouin. M. Du Mont pub- 
lished various articles in the public journals of his day; but his principal 
work is the Botaniste Cultivateur, or Description, Culture, and Use of the greater 
Pari of the Plants, Foreign and Indigenous, which are cultivated in France and 
England, arranged according to the Method of Jussieu, which appeared in five 
volumes, 8vo, in 1802, and to which two supplementary volumes have since 
been added. This work has had the same celebrity in France that MJiller’s 
Dictionary has had in England. M. Du Mont died in June, 1824, at the age 
of 78 years; his estate is now the property of his daughter, Madame la 
Baronne Mallet de Coupigny, who has presented the green-house and _hot- 
house plants (with the exception of the pelargoniums) to the Société d’ Agri- 
culture de Boulogne, but who cultivates the collection of hardy articles, and 
more especially the trees and shrubs, with the greatest care. The place is 
visited by gardeners, botanists, and naturalists from every part of the world; 
and no name in France is mentioned with greater respect than that of the 
patriarch De Courset. 
Secr. II. Ofthe Indigenous and Foreign Trees and Shrubs of Holland 
and the Netherlands. 
Tne indigenous trees and shrubs of Belgium and Holland are very few, 
partly from the limited extent of territory, but chiefly from the great uni- 
formity of the surface, the soil, and the climate. The only ZVora which has 
been attempted of Belgium is that of Lejeune and Courtois (reviewed in Gard. 
Mag., vol. x. p.449.), of which only a part has been published. Holland can 
hardly be said to have an indigenous ligneous flora; but into that country 
foreign trees and shrubs were introduced as soon as they were into any other 
in Europe. The botanic garden of Leyden, and its earliest catalogues, may be 
referred to as a proof of this; but for its history, and for various details re- 
