The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 101 



the plant on which you intend it to be parasitical, and then sow the 

 seed. Juncus glaucus may be seen here and in numerous 

 French gardens planted near the water : it is very extensively 

 used in nearly all French gardens for tying plants. They plant a 

 ring of it round the water cistern, or any convenient spot, and 

 cut a handful whenever it is required. It seems a useful practice. 

 Fruit growers like the rush for tying down the young shoots, while 

 it is also useful for tying up annual and herbaceous plants. 



Should any visitor to the Jardin des Plantes wonder at the poor 

 external aspect of its houses and some other features as compared 

 with those at Kew, he would do well to bear in mind that money 

 has a good deal to do with such things ; and that the grant for 

 museums, lecturers (the lectures are free), the expensive collection 

 of animals, and everything else in the Jardin des Plantes, is mise- 

 rably small. On the other hand, the gardens and plants of La 

 Ville de Paris are luxuriously provided with the " needful j" the 

 municipality of Paris often spending prodigious sums for the pur- 

 chase of plants, and even for the plant decoration of a single ball. 

 One ball at the Hotel de Ville during the festivities of the past year 

 cost considerably over s^ 0,000, while the poor Jardin des Plantes 

 gets from the State I am not quite sure how much, but probably 

 not one-third of that sum, to exist upon for a whole year. 



TREES, ROADS, WALKS, AND CEMETERIES. 



Perhaps the noblest feature of Parisian gardening or Parisian im- 

 provements is the great abundance of healthy young trees that are 

 introduced into the very heart of the city, and planted wherever a 

 new road or boulevard is constructed. It is indeed very surprising 

 to see how well this is done, and to what an enormous extent, as 

 well in the centre of Paris, on the boulevards, along the river, &c., 

 as on the scores of miles of suburban boulevards, radiating avenues 

 and roads, the sides of which one would think capable of supplying 

 Paris with building ground for a dozen generations to come. All 

 the planting in all the London parks is as nothing compared to 



