184 BRIEF REMARKS. 



to obtain soon a very considerable addition in Lagasca's herbarium, 

 which the Government intends purchasing. One portion of this latter, 

 consisting of some hundreds of packets, is in the natural-history build- 

 ing ; the other, in about twenty cases, lies at the Custom-house in 

 Malaga, where both have continued many years, because Lagasca's 

 heirs, who are uneducated people, caring nothing about botany, have 

 declined to defray the expenses of warehousing the collections. 



The number of cultivated plants in the Madrid garden very little 

 exceeds 5,000 species. The catalogue, published in 1849 by the three 

 professors, at their own expense, comprises 3,780 species, — that is, such 

 only as they were able to determine since the death of Rodriguez, which 

 took place in the summer of 1847. He had— it is impossible to guess 

 for what reason — removed all the labels of the plants ! Cutanda takes 

 much pains to increase the number of plants, and is particularly anx- 

 ious that the Madrid garden should cultivate all the plants of the penin- 

 sula. As a member of the Comicion de la Carta geologica de Espanna 

 (which chart, at present merely an accurate geognostic-botanical one 

 of the province of Madrid, is to be published at the charge of the Go- 

 vernment) Cutanda is obliged to undertake annual journeys, in order to 

 study the vegetation of the country ; on which occasion, he is always 

 accompanied" by the semillero, who collects seeds and plants for the 

 garden. If this honest, zealous, and disinterested young man is long 

 spared, the Madrid garden may be expected gradually to recover the 

 rank it held in Cavanilles's time. Last year the government built a 

 hot-house, which was hitherto entirely wanting. It is still more to be 

 wished that a better supply of water could be obtained ; at present it 

 is scarcely adequate for watering one-half of the very considerable area 

 of the garden, especially in summer. 



What is hoped for in regard to the Madrid garden, has partly been 

 accomplished in that of Valencia. When the author visited it for the 

 first time in 1844, it was only nominally a botanical garden, in which 

 little more was cultivated than oranges, limes, roses, and common 

 ornamental plants ; whereas it is at present in tolerable order, and 

 contains more than 6,000 species. There is a pretty large glass-house, 

 one-half being a caldarium, the other a tepidarium : in the former 

 are cultivated nearly 130 species of Orchideae, and 50 of Palms ; in the 

 latter, among others, a considerable number of tropical and subtropical 

 Ferns. A second house is to be erected in the course of the present 

 year. A number of Crassulaceae and Cactea?, and similar plants of 

 New Holland and the Cape, grow in the open air. The general 

 number is constantly augmenting, and eveiy thing is done to cultivate 

 plants of colder climates than the Valencian, by means of watering, 

 artificial rocks, shrubberies, &c. This sudden and advantageous change 

 in the state of tilings is almost exclusively due to the then Eector of 

 the University of Valencia, Don Francisco Carbonell. This learned, 

 energetic, and wealthy gentleman, was political chief of Valencia in 

 1844, and was much dreaded throughout the kingdom, on account 

 of his inflexible and rather despotic procedure ; but he made it a point, 

 it seems, to restore, at any cost, the university garden. Though a 

 diplomatist, and not a botanist, he interests himself actively in na- 



