from June 28. to August 16. 1840. 203 



and valuable sorts wliich are already in the countrvj in the 

 decoration of the grounds of villas, or in the royal parks and 

 pleasure-grounds, seems little attended to. Though there is 

 abundant space at Versailles, St. Cloud, Meudon, Ncuilly, and 

 especially at Fontainebleau, nothing has been done in the way of 

 planting an arboretum, which would be a most useful and in- 

 structive ornament. The nearest approach to this is a collection 

 in the Bois de Boulogne, which appears to have been recently 

 planted ; but it is very deficient in species, and the plants are 

 either not named or numbered at all, or very erroneously 

 named. The soil in the Bois de Boulogne is only fit for the 

 growth of pines, and a national pinetum might there be formed 

 with every prospect of success, as is evident from the growth made 

 by three or four species already there. With a view to forest 

 culture, great exertions have been made in different directions, 

 and by different persons. The late M. Delamarre, author of 

 Traite Pratique de la Culttire des Phis, and a proprietor in the 

 neighbourhood of Rouen, left his extensive estate and pine 

 plantations to the Society of Agriculture of Paris, a committee 

 of whom direct the continuation of the experiments commenced 

 by M. Delamarre. But, perhaps, the most varied and extensive 

 experiments, with a view to forest culture, made by any indi- 

 vidual in France, are those by M. Vilmorin at Barres, of which 

 some account is given in a work entitled De V Agriculture des 

 Gatinais, ^x., par M. A. Puvis (reviewed in a former Volume). 

 The greater number of kinds of American oaks and of European 

 pines have here been sown in masses upwards of twenty years 

 ago ; and, though the soil is poor sand, they have now become 

 handsome trees. At Barres, as in the Bois de Boulogne, in 

 the Hackney Arboretum, and in the grounds of villas in the 

 neighbourhood of London, the most rapid-growing, the straight- 

 est and most erect in stem, the most symmetrical in general 

 form, the most graceful in the disposition of its branches, the 

 best adapted for producing timber and for growing on a poor, 

 dry, sandy soil, is the Quercus paldstris. The next best species 

 is the Q. coccinea, which, in point of foliage, may be considered 

 as Q. paliistris on a larger scale ; but the tree is of somewhat 

 slower growth, the trunk not so straight and erect, and the 

 branches less symmetrically and gracefully disposed. Quercus 

 rubra, which differs from Q. coccinea in having the leaves much 

 less cut, is found, both at Barres and in the Bois de Boulogne, 

 to grow much more rapidly than Q. sessiliflora ; and though the 

 timber is of little value as such, and would not be worth grow- 

 ing in England, yet in France it is valuable as fuel. It is 

 singular, that neither at Barres nor in the Bois de Boulogne are 

 there any specimens of Q. alba; the reason assigned for which 

 is, that the acorns lose their vitality during their passage from 



