4^8 Additional Notes. 



*' Mrs. Delany has finished nine hundred and seventy ac- 

 curate and elegant representations of different vegetables, 

 with the parts of their flowers, fructification, &€., accord- 

 ing with the classification of Linnaeus, in what she terms paper" 

 vwsdic. She began this work at the age of 74, whsn her sight 

 would no longer serve her to paint, in which she much excelled. 

 Between tlie age of 74 and 82, at which time her eyes quite 

 failed her, she executed the curious Hortus Siccus above mentioned, 

 which I suppose contains a greater number of plants than were 

 ever before drawn from the life by any one person. Her method 

 consisted in placing the leaves of each plant, with the petals^ and 

 all the other parts of the flowers, on coloured paper, and cutting 

 them with scissors accurately to the natural size and tbrm, and 

 then pasting them on a dark ground 3 the effect of which is won- 

 derful, and their accuracy less liable to fallacy than drawings. 

 She is at this time (1/88) in her 89th year, with all the powers 

 of a fine understanding still unimpaired. I am informed that an- 

 otlier very ingenious lady, Mrs. North, is constmcting a similar 

 Hortus Siccus, or paper-garden, which she executes on a ground 

 of vellum, with such elegant taste and scientific accuracy, that it 

 cannot fail to become a work of inestimable value." — Botanic 

 Garden, part ii, canto ii, 1. 155. 



Note (I)D),p. 18/. — ^The late royal government of France, 

 for the promotion of botanical science, was in the habit of esta- 

 blishing Botanical Gardens in various parts of her colonies,- and of 

 foreign countries. A piece of land of moderate fertility an^i ex- 

 tent, hired or purchased at the public expense. <%! "fd, in the 

 distant country where it was situate, as a hcs^ffor a botanist, a 

 repository for the seeds he might collect, and a nursery for the 

 plants he should cultivate. From establishments of this naLiue in 

 distant regions, rich treasures of botanical specimens and informa- 

 tion have been transmitted to France. 



The late king of France provided two gardens of this kind in 

 the United States 5 one in Bergen county, in the state of New 

 Jersey, within eight or nine miles of the city of New York ; the 

 other in South Carolina. The botanist employed to superintend 

 these, and to perform all the duties of a botanical pensionary, was 

 M. Andrew Michaux, who has lately distinguished himself by his 

 Ilibloire dcs C/icncs dc I'Amcricjuc, &c. Paris, 1801, Folio. 



The first person who conceived and carried into eftect Llie de- 



