180 Botanical Notices from Spain. 



panniers for mules, chairs, and tlie peculiar sandals which are worn 

 all over the kingdom ; and partly worked into ropes which are in 

 great request, and for instance, are manufactured in great quantity 

 in Marseilles. In two other quarters of the garden, 400 varieties of 

 apple- and pear-trees are in cultivation, chiefly hrought over from 

 North America; also in another, a collection of 95 varieties of api'icots, 

 peaches and the like. In one division, surrounded by 36 varieties 

 of almond-trees, are 308 kinds of Spanish vines, which are arranged 

 according to the classical work of Don Roxas Clemente {Ensayo 

 sobre la vin comu/i). Other quarters are designed for the fodder- 

 plants, for trees and shrubs, which ai-e to be used partly for planting 

 forests, partly for gardens and parks. The back part of the gar- 

 den is closed in by a very long hedge of Agave americana, L. (sp. 

 Pita), behind which stand the collected varieties of olives and algar- 

 robas (Ceratotiia SUujua, L.). The first ground for this garden was 

 laid out in the year 1835; however the money was insufficient to the 

 purchase of the required area, which was first accomplished in the year 

 1839. There is here a theatre for the lectures on agriculture, also a 

 collection of instruments and models. I'he chair of agriculture was 

 established by royal command in the year 1834. Since that time 

 nothing more has been done by the government for natural science 

 in the university of Valencia, although this is among the most fre- 

 quented of the Spanish universities, since it numbers at present 

 1800 so-called students and some 60 professors. 



The immediate neighbourhood of the city, known and famous as 

 the Huerta de Valencia, is very astonishing to every foreigner. Tlie 

 fertile plain watered by the Rio Turia (in the midst of which lies the 

 city about a mile distant from the sea), is, in a circuit of from three to 

 five miles round, converted b)'' the indefatigable activity of the Valen- 

 cians into a garden verdant throughout the whole year. Innumerable 

 water-courses traverse the Huerta, and numerous water-wheels con- 

 duct this element, so precious in Spain, into all the fields and gardens. 

 The culture of wheat forms the chief branch of agriculture ; besides 

 which, a particularly large quantity of hemp, and westward of Va- 

 lencia, toward the lake of Albufera, a great deal of rice is also grown. 

 The fields are surrounded with rows of mulberry-trees, and in the 

 east and north the Huerta presents extended plantations of olives, 

 which are here much larger and more beautiful than the dwarf shrub- 

 like olive-trees of Provence. It has also many fig, citron and orange 

 trees, especially in the neighbourhood of the country-houses, while 

 the roads and streets are ornamented with rows of elms, Pojyulus ca- 

 nescens, nigra and monilifera. The date-palm is rather a rare object, 

 although it attains hei'e a height of as much as 40 to 60 feet. They 

 are seen most abundantly in the gardens and courts of the numerous 

 monasteries in and around Valencia. For instance, I have seen in 

 the court of the monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes twelve, in 

 that of the Cartucha Ara Christi, not far from Murviedro, about 

 thirty high-stemmed palms. The private estates in the Huerta are 

 mostly surrounded with a hedge of Ariindo Donax, L., which in damp 

 places in the warm region grows wild everywhere, or of Tamariw gal- 



