r 



THE PAEIS HERBARIUM 181 



called. M. de Jussieu, son of the mighty Jussieu,^ does 

 not really love Botany, but wears his father's shoes 

 though they pinch him. Being clever, all that he does 

 is good, but that is not much ; he is extremely kind and 

 amiable, but close, and buys no books. He took me for 

 five hours round the garden in the kindest manner, but 

 never once opened his lips to ask about Botany in English 

 gardens or plants ; he is the teacher of Botany. M. Brong- 

 niart, a clever youngish man (he looks twenty-eight and 

 is forty-eight), is the second head, and his department is 

 to name the garden plants ; he is considered hardly a 

 Botanist at all, but is fond of fossils though there he has 

 done nothing lately. Mirbel is the third head, who cultivates 

 the plants, and a pretty mess he makes of it, I assure you, 

 for worse grown things I never saw ; in their best houses 

 they look like our smoke stoves exactly. 



Now the great aim of every French man of Science is 

 to become a member of the Institute, of whom there are but 

 very few, and only added to by the death of one of the 

 original members ; all having one aim and that being 

 ambition, they quarrel like cat and dog, and excepting 

 Brongniart and Jussieu there is not one who has not many 

 enemies, as it is said these two would have did they study 

 Botany and were they not members already, very much 

 because they were their fathers' sons. 



To his Father 



February 13, 1845. 



I have been very busy since I wrote last, chiefly in 

 the Herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes, which grows in 

 magnitude under my eyes [' though it must be confessed, 

 he adds four days later, *that the want of space and pro- 

 portion of paper are enormous '] ; its riches are very great, 

 and the persons connected with it are all so extremely kind 

 to me that I can hardly thank them enough ; they have 

 given me 300 species of New Zealand plants, chiefly from 

 the Middle Island, and where they have duplicates of 



^ Adrien de Jussieu (1797-1853) succeeded his father as Professor of 

 Botany at the Paris Botanical Garden in 1826. In addition to several 

 important botanical memoirs, he wrote a very successful Cours Elementaire 

 de Botanique, while many botanists of all nations were trained by him. 

 His father, Antoine, Sir William's friend, wrote the Genera Plantarum, the 

 principles of which were adopted and enlarged by De CandoUe. 



VOL. I If 



