Forbes' s Journal of a Horticullnral Tour. 317 



ber of the Horticultural Society, Author of *' Hortus Woburn- 

 ensis," &c. 8vo, pp. 164. 



The Duke of Bedford, who spends his princely fortune in a 

 manner every way worthy of a benevolent and enlightened mind, 

 with his usual anxiety for the promotion of useful knowledge, 

 very liberally and kindly proposed, in the autumn of 1835, 

 " that his head gardener, Mr. Forbes, should undertake a hor- 

 ticultural tour through several parts of Germany, Belgium, and 

 France, with a view of inspecting the different collections and 

 productions cultivated in some of the most celebrated horticul- 

 tural establishments in these countries." In the work before us 

 Mr. Forbes has submitted to the public a cursory detail of the 

 various gardens and objects that came under his observation, 

 during a tour occupying eight weeks; and during which period 

 he visited the following towns and places, and the gardens 

 around them: — Flaniburg, Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, Nurem- 

 berg, Munich, Augsburg, Uim, Eslingen, Stuttgardt, Baden, 

 Rastadt, Carlsruhe, Schvvetzingen, Heidelberg, Darmstadt, 

 Frankfort, Coblentz, Bonn, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Neuss, Aix- 

 la-Chapelle, Liege, Namur, Mons, Ath, Engheim, Brussels, 

 Waterloo, Ghent, Antwerp, Malines, Louvain, Valenciennes, 

 Paris (where, at the Jardin des Plantes, Mr. Forbes found 

 Mr. W. Douglas, a young man lately sent to that garden by the 

 Duke of Devonshire), Versailles, Montreuil, Vitry, Rouen, 

 Dieppe, Brighton; where he arrived on October l^., having left 

 London on August 19. 



We have accompanied Mr. Forbes through all these places, 

 and the gardens round them, with much pleasure; this being, 

 no doubt, greatly enhanced by our having seen almost the whole 

 of them more than once. We wish, for the sake of encourajrintr 

 other gentlemen to indulge their gardeners in such a trip, that 

 Mr. Forbes had stated the expense; but this, exclusive of pur- 

 chases, and of the expense of the packet to and from England, 

 could not, we think, amount to more than 10/, or 12/, a week. 

 A wealthy and liberal proprietor might indulge his gardener 

 with two or three weeks' expenses, from one or all of the follow- 

 ing motives : as a reward for good conduct, as a means of his 

 gardener's personal improvement, and as a means of procuring 

 new plants to enrich his collection, and establishing a gardening 

 cori'espondence for the same object. 



The following extract from the preface will give a very good 

 idea of what a gardener may expect as a result of a few weeks' 

 visit to the Continent : — 



" The reader will easily understand," Mr. Forbes observes, " that it required 

 the utmost diligence on my part to fulfil the objects I had in view. Yet I 

 was enabled to investigate such modes of culture as were adopted in the 

 principal gardens, where the produce appeared in any way superior to our 



