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botanical value, and the interest of £2000 devoted to its maintenance, 

 &c., together with other minor advantages. 



Under such auspices we cannot but anticipate a great impulse being 

 given by Oxford to the study of botany ; the more as the time is come 

 when it should be so. In Scotland the science has been greatly en- 

 couraged by botanical professors, both holding University and Regius 

 salaries, who have faithfully devoted themselves to their pupils, and 

 many of them to original research in the science which they teach. 

 In the two great English Universities little or nothing has been done 

 until within the last year, when Oxford has responded so liberally to 

 the appeal of the trustees of the Feilding herbarium, and the new tri- 

 pos has filled the botanical lecture-room at Cambridge. Our profes- 

 sors at University and King's College, London, give a vast deal more 

 time to their students than their positions demand, — zeal for the cause 

 of science, and not emolument, is their stimulus. Virtually, then, bo- 

 tany is supported in England by private liberality. The great herba- 

 ria and libraries of systematic botanists, viz., those of Sir W. Hooker, 

 Mr. Brown, Mr. Bentham, Dr. Lindley, and Dr. Alexander (we give 

 them in the order, we believe, of their extent and value) are all pri- 

 vately procured and supported ; the microscopes, books, and appara- 

 tus of the physiologists are all private too. The botanist from abroad 

 or the student at home must, to visit anything worth studying in Eng- 

 land, obtain introductions to their possessors ; consequently systema- 

 tic and structural botany make little progress in this country compared 

 with the means at our disposal, whilst physiological is nearly confined 

 to following up the observations of Continental professors, and the 

 microscope is a mere toy in the hands of nine-tenths of its votaries. 

 Great discoveries are seldom made by those who are acquainted with 

 one branch only of the science they cultivate, and all our great phy- 

 siologists have been as profound systematists. This essential preli- 

 minary knowledge is only to be obtained by a lifetime of travel and 

 study, or by such extensive botanical gardens as no government could 

 afford to maintain, or by herbaria such as only private individuals 

 have hitherto possessed, but which our Universities should maintain 

 as absolutely essential adjuncts to the cultivation of any branch of 

 botanical science. — Literary Gazette. 



Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Imperial Academy. 



Simultaneously with the meetings of the German Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, the Imperial Academy Naturae Curio- 

 VOL. TV. 4 P 



