Prof. Schultes 07i the Cultivation of Botany in England. 351 



ill which the sub-genera into which I divide them have not 

 to be assigned to different families, I have left them together 

 under thefr old generic name. This was not only a regard which 

 I owed to the memory of Linnaeus, but it was also an atten- 

 tion necessary for preserving the communication and mutual 

 understanding of the naturalists of different countries." 



LVI. On the Cultivation of Botany in England. By Professor 

 Schultes, of Landshiit. 



[For the following narrative of a visit to our country by a 

 learned German naturalist in 1824, containing the opinions 

 which he was led to form of some of our Scientific Institutions 

 and men of science, we are indebted to the 1st Number of a 

 new and interesting work. The Botanical Miscellany of Pro- 

 fessor Hooker. Tlie narrative was published in the Botanische 

 Zeitn?ig for 1825, and is the substance of a letter, addressed 

 from London by Dr. Schultes, a Professor of Landshut in ,^ 

 Bohemia, to the celebrated naturalist Count Stembergi d^H '■^■^■* 



<' We must not be supposed," observes Dr. Hooker, " to 

 assent to all that our author has said, either in regard to the 

 objects which he saw, or to the views which he has been led 

 to entertain of different persons and their actions. The short- 

 ness of his stay in England, and the circumstance of his ob- 

 taining information only through the medium of a foreign lan- 

 guage, may be justly offered as an excuse for some inaccu- 

 racies ; while an useful warning may be derived from them, as 

 to the caution with which we should, ourselves, in distant 

 countries, form our judgements. 



" In the present instance, the mistakes to which we allude 

 are of so trifling a kind, and are so amusing, that we only wish 

 our English travellers always erred in an equally charitable 

 and cheerful manner."] 



AFTER a passage of twenty-four hours across the Channel, 

 we landed at Harwich on the 2Gth day of August. Here we 

 had an innnediate opportunity of experiencing the vexatious in- 

 terpretation of a regulation which, under Napoleon's govern- 

 ment, would have been cried out against by the English as an in- 

 vention of military despotism ; but which in this land of liberty, 

 as it is called, has subsisted lor these hundred years. This law 

 lays a tax of several jience on every pound-weight of books 

 imported into the kingdom. Now we hail with us on board 

 the packet half a dozen folios, for the purpose of drying within 

 their pa^es the plants which we siiould collect on our journey; 

 and aithoufh these were only old works on law and divinity, 



which 



