426 Boston Journal of Natural History. 



honorable confidence, and abusing the public beneficence, may so trouble 

 a man's conscience, that he shall desire to run away from himself. 



This garden and grounds, and its conservatories, are designed to fur- 

 nish specimens of all the most valuable and curious native and exotic 

 plants and fruits ; and, in addition to their present erections, the proprie- 

 tors are now about to build a conservatory four himdred feet long and 

 seventy feet wide, with a height proportioned. The grounds are always 

 open to the studious and scientific, and a course of botanical lectures is 

 given, with the illustrations to be found here. 



Botany may here be studied to great advantage, as portions of the 

 ground are allotted to the perfect arrangement of the plants, according to 

 the classification and orders of Linnseus, and in another part, according to 

 the natural order; and for the benefit of agricultural students and farmers, 

 specimens are cultivated and neatly arranged of all the useful vegetables 

 and grasses, with their botanical and their vulgar names affixed to them, 

 with specimens likewise of the most pernicious weeds, that the farmer 

 may see M'hat to choose and what to avoid. The collection is already 

 extensive, and is constantly becoming enlarged. It is difficult to overrate 

 the value of such establishments, both for use and for pleasure, for their 

 pecuniary, their intellectual, and their moral benefit. 



While penning this account, I hear, Avith extreme regret, that the Bo- 

 tanical Garden in Boston, a city so eminent for its public spirit and 

 beneficence, is to be strangled in its infancy and abandoned ; and that the 

 ground is likely to be appropriated to buildings, so that the rich prospect 

 of the charming environs of the city is to be shut out, and the fresh and 

 salubrious breezes from the verdant fields and hills of the surrounding 

 country are to be debarred an entrance for the refreshment of the inhab- 

 itants of this busy and crowded mart ; and even the sight of the glorious 

 western sky, which, with its gilded, and glowing, and gorgeous drapery, 

 I have made, at evening, a pilgrimage, many hundreds of times, to con- 

 template and adore, is to be excluded by high walls of brick and stone. 

 Should this be done ? and how can such an injury, if once committed, be 

 repaired ? Surely they will forgive one of their own children, whom no 

 distance of place and no length of absence can estrange from his honored 

 and revered birtliplace, in saying that even one half of the expense thrown 

 away upon public dinners and parade, would secure to them permanent 

 provisions for health, instruction, comfort, and delight, whose value no 

 pecuniary standard can measure, and which can never be duly appreci- 

 ated, but by those who have enjoyed and have been deprived of them." 



Art. II. Boston Journal of Natural History, containing 

 papers and communications read before the Boston Soci- 

 ety of Natural History, and jyuhlished by their direction. 

 Vol. IV., Part IV., p. 377 to 512. Boston, 1814. 



The present nnmber of this Journal, concluding the 

 fourth volume of the transactions of the Society^ is filled 



