308 Botanical Miscellany. 



of the apostles, Thomas, when he shall have weighed in his hand what is 

 sent thither, when he shall have tasted of the fruit, and inhaled the rich 

 perfnme diffused by pines, peaches, and nectarines, he will, perhaps, satisfy 

 himself that it is not all a phantasmagoria. We had the honour of being 

 present at a Meeting ^of the Society in September, 1824; and we must 

 confess that although conversant with the rearing of fruit for almost forty 

 years, we had never beheld finer peaches, nectarines, plums, melons, grapes, 

 and pine-apples, than we saw here. We had been much disappointed in 

 the London fruit-markets, where we certainly saw uncommonly fine-look- 

 ing fruit ; but, on tasting, found them to be acid or insipid, compared with 

 the produce of our southern hemisphere, in Tyrol, the south of France, 

 and Lower Hungary ; but after having enjoyed the flavour of the fruit here 

 presented to us, it was easier for us to abandon our prejudices against this 

 kind of English produce, than to conceive how so northern and foggy a 

 climate could have brought to perfection such rich fruit ; how Art has thus 

 overcome the omnipotence of Nature." 



The Chelsea Botanic Garden possesses " neither great size nor beauty, 

 and still less elegance; yet includes, among the 6000 plants there cultivated, 

 many very rare officinal vegetables, some of which are to be found nowhere 

 else. Me who would here study botany has a rich field open to him ; its 

 value enhanced by Mr. Anderson's experienced remarks." 



" The Garden of the cheerful Ilaworlh, at the Queen's Elms, near Chel- 

 sea, who indefatigably and exclusively studies the succulent plants, and 

 possesses many extremely rare ones," was visited, and the stranger cordially 

 received and highly gratified. The herbarium of Mr. Menzies is one of the 

 neatest he has ever seen. 



" At the British Museum we had expected to find a treasure of natural 

 history; but, except Sloane's collection of dried plants in thirty volumes, 

 and a herbarium which belonged to a M. van Moll, with a small, but 

 well presei'ved set of British birds, we found nothing that interested us 

 at all." 



" We have visited the celebrated Floiver-Marhet of London ; of which no 

 German, who has not seen it, could form a proper idea. What chiefly 

 struck us is, that the greatest rarities and the most trifling articles are here 

 exposed for sale together, and that both are eagerly bought. Were such 

 things to be carried to the Man-he aux Fleurs at Paris, not a pennyworth 

 of them would be sold. But by the tv/o flower-markets of these two prin- 

 cipal cities of Europe, an estimate of the different character of their inha- 

 bitants may be formed. The wealthy and respectable Englishman, who is 

 a connoisseur, will purchase nothing that is coauiion ; for, if pretty, he has 

 it already in his garden : and the poor Londoner, who cannot afford to buy 

 what is beautiful, will still obtain, if possible, something green to decorate 

 the window of his dark little attic, and give his last farthing for a bit of 

 verdure. The opulent Erenchman, who values all objects only as they 

 please the eye, without reference to their being common or scarce, is will- 

 ing to pay a greater price for a lovely rose-bush, than for the rarest plant 

 from New Holland or the Cape of Good Hope ; and as to the poor artisan 

 of the French capital, he only thinks of vegetable productions as they are 

 fit for culinary uses ; and whether they be blue or green to look at, is the 

 same to him. Hence it arises that the Parisian flower-market offers a much 

 more delightful vista than tiiat of London, though it is much smaller and 

 more poorly stocked, as the French capital itself cannot compare with 

 London for extent or wealth." 



The public squares of the metropolis astonished and delighted him, and 

 still more so the public nurseries, especially 



The establishment of Messrs. Loddigcs, of which he declares, with great 

 truth, " it would be hard to say whether its great extent and the beautiful 

 productions with which it is stocked, or the judgment, taste, and liberality 



