382 Linnean Society of Paris. 
‘“« Sir Humphrey Davy, and Mons. de Paupaile, a Paris 
Linnzan member, invite to their chemical laboratory, all 
horticulturists. who are to be the best judges of their vegeta- 
ble earths, whether lime, clay, alumine, or magnesia, predomi- 
nate in them; having besides some inflammable or oxygena- 
ted metallic bases, besides vegetable and animal matters. 
That these elements, with a great deposition from other 
and carbon, &c. are the principal support of plants, 
is “evident by the gramineous kind, which contain so muc 
siliceous earth, whilst their nutritive and circulating fluids, 
if analyzed, are found to be binary, or such other compounds 
s always constitute organic animal or vegetable matter. 
The horticulturist should, therefore, be provided with his 
chemical laboratory, with acids, alkaline, and other com- 
pound tests, to make up, judge, and correct his composts, as 
the occasion will require 
“ The study of hotany, so necessary to horticulturists, is 
next directed by our Linnean friend, (Mons. Victor Auger,) 
in a much easier method than that which i is wrongly thought 
to be indispensably required for it, to wit: to be familiar 
with various systems of that science in Greek and Latin vo- 
cabularies ; to collect quantities of plants; to dry them up 
in large herbaria ; to purchase extensive libraries and floras ; ; 
cause ag memory is overloaded with distant, unconnected, 
superfluous materials, instead of which, he should have 
applied himself to the knowledge of indigenous plants, be- 
fore the exotic ; content himself to designate them with ver- 
nacular and practical names ; to class them in a natural, 
_ preference to an artificial method; by their flower, or 
their use ; by their size, or by their duration ; by their hab- 
its, or r by their localities ; even by their popular attributes ; 
for it is a fact, that in any existing language, the ordinary 
name of a plant j is most significative of any of the above 
rs or attributes. The ancients had not a better 
onthe to study botany since the days of ampheastitss:s . 
the age of Tournefort, Linnzeus and Jussieu. I have 
doubt b but “ celebrated Bernardin de St. Pierre could ea 
h system of nomenclature in botany—that 
of classing plants by the roots, which in general present @ 
