Cultivation of Botany in England. 365 



children being in Cadiz,) and his fortune ; but also his great 

 herbarium ; the manuscript of his Flora of Spain, on which he 

 had been employed for more than twenty years, and which was 

 ready to be printed ; even the manuscript of his Monograph 

 of the Cerealia, with the dried specimens belonging to it, on 

 which he had laboured at Seville and there completed it, — all, 

 all were destroyed ! He saved nothing from the great ship- 

 wreck of that Cortes to which -his talents and virtue had raised 

 him, but his own life. Far from his beautiful country, and 

 from his beloved relations, he now lives in the foggy and ex- 

 pensive London, where he participates in the afflictions of so 

 many of his worthy and exiled countrymen ! 



Lagasca and I met almost daily after this interview, and 

 made some botanical excursions together : among other places, 

 to the celebrated gardens of Kew. We did not see Mr. Town- 

 send Aiton, as he had been called away to Windsor ; but in 

 thisVell known garden, whose Catalogue has given it so much 

 celebrity, we did not find the pleasure that we had anticipated. 

 We were disappointed particularly in the plants which grow 

 in the open air, which are not so accurately named as those 

 in the Gottingen Botanic Garden, superintended by Schrader: 

 sometimes the same species is marked with two different names. 

 The garden at Kew consists of a fine park, and a large bo- 

 tanical garden of about twenty acres. What we usually term 

 a park in Germany is like anything rather than what receives 

 the same appellation in England ; and which is neither more 

 nor less than a wood, in which nature and art seem to dispute 

 for the original formation and present possession. As in a 

 wood, one may walk, ride and drive about it, without risk of 

 interruption. English parks are in fact beautiful woods, and 

 nothing more ; and it will ever remain one of the most diffi- 

 cult problems in the delightful science of laying out pleasure- 

 grounds, so to plan a charming wood, as that he who is in it 

 shall not know whether he be in a grove or a house. We 

 have on the continent many exquisitely formed gardens, under 

 the name of English ones ; but an English park I have only 

 seen in England. The Botanic Garden at Kew is surrounded 

 by high walls, and intersected into long squares. With re- 

 gard either to its plan, or its nine or ten stoves, it will not bear 

 a comparison with those of Mulmaison, or the Grand Duke of 

 Weimar, of Prince Esterhazy at Eisoustadt, or even with the 

 botanical division of the Imperial Garden at Schiinbrunn. A 

 Supplement to the Ilorlus Kcwcnsis, under the inspection of 

 Sir Robert Brown, will soon be j)ublislied: many species which 

 were formerly cuUivateil here, arc said to be lost. Our coun- 

 tryman, the celebrated flower-painter, Mr. Francis Bauer, with 



whom 



