A GLANCE AT BOTANIC GARDENS. 345 



differing from that which Lindley, in 1835, estimated as the 

 probable aggregate of the vegetable species of the world. 



Great in importance are botanic gardens. Loudon, in his 

 Hortus Britannicus (ed. 1832), places at 22,660 the number of 

 Phanerogams cultivated in the gardens of the Bristol amateur 

 botanists. With this number we must not confound the living 

 species exhibited, in other counties, in gardens designed for 

 the instruction of students, nor the grand total reared for a 

 similar purpose at Kew. Kunth's enumeration, in 1861, of the 

 plants at the Botanic Gardens at Berlin, one of the richest in 

 Europe, amounted to upwards of 14,000 species, including 

 375 heaths. Among the Phanerogams were 1600 Synan- 

 therae, 1150 Leguminosae, 428 Labiatae, 370 Umbelliferae, 460 

 Orchidaceae, 60 Palmacese, 600 Gramineae and Cyperaceae, &c. 

 By comparing these data with the number of species described 

 in the works of De Candolle, Walpers, Bentham, Lindley, 

 Kunth, and others, we find that in the Berlin gardens are culti- 

 vated only one-seventh of the known species of the Synantherae, 

 one-eighth of the Leguminosae, one-ninth of the Gramineae, and 

 about one-fiftieth of the smaller families, such as the Labiatae 

 and Umbelliferse. 



Now, if we admit that, on the one hand, the number of 

 phanerogamous species cultivated in all the great gardens of 

 Europe is about 30,000, and, on the other, that the cultivated 

 Phanerogams form about one-eighth part of the species de- 

 scribed in books and preserved in herbariums, we obtain a 

 total of 24,000 species. 



