SECRETARY'S REPORT. 3G3 



That great storehouse of natural history, the Jardiu desPlautes, 

 with its endless halls of botanical, mincralogical, anatomical, 

 and zoulogical collections, its lecture rooms, where the people 

 have free access to the instructions of the first scientific men of 

 France, and its great variety of living animals and plants, it 

 would be equally useless to attempt to describe. The same 

 may said of the Jardin d'acclimatation, connected with the Bois 

 de Boulogne. The arrangement of its animals, birds and plants 

 is admirable. 



The Conservatory of Arts and Trades is a school on the most 

 extensive scale for the industrial classes, embracing a great col- 

 lection of models of agricultural buildings and implements, not 

 only of France but of foreign countries, where accomplished 

 professors give lectures upon the application of tlie sciences to 

 the mechanic arts, at the charge of the government, access being 

 free to all. 



I had the rare fortune to gain access to the Conciergerie, 

 where Maria Antoinette was imprisoned till led out to die ; 

 where Robespierre and the Girondists spent their last days 

 waiting for their turn at the guillotine. Tlie great attractions 

 of Versailles, with its landscape gardening and its costly foun- 

 tains, which I saw in full play, the markets of Paris, tlie impe- 

 rial library, the tomb of Napoleon in the church of the Hotel 

 des Invalides, and a thousand other objects which adorn this 

 city, offer many points of interest, but I must forego tlie tempta- 

 tion to touch upon them here. 



I arrived again in London by way of Dieppe and Newhaven, 

 towards the end of October, and in time to renew my visits to 

 the International Exhibition, the British Museum, the ZoJilogical 

 Gardens, and the Kensington Museum, and to hear that cele- 

 brated preacher, Mr. Spurgeon. The Kensington Museum had 

 on temporary deposit, an infinite variety of the most valuable 

 plate and other rare articles from the palace and the lordly man- 

 sions of the nobility, many of them of great antiquity and of 

 the rarest and most costly description. The watch, carried for 

 several years by Oliver Cromwell, and other things of equal 

 interest were there. 



We will recur for a moment to the latter part of August 

 after my first return from the continent, when I left London for 

 the midland counties and the north. Necessity compels me to 



