94 
NATURE 
[Fune 1, 1871 

modifies circumstances connected with their propagation. Such 
errors or false data are, no doubt, as yet very few and unim- 
portant compared to those which haye arisen from the reliance 
on garden plants for botanical observations, but, as zoological 
gardens multiply and extend, they will have to be more and more 
kept in view. 
In my younger days there were already a number of small 
collections of living animals, but almost all either travelling 
or local menageries exhibited for money by private individuals, 
or small collections kept up as a matter of curiosity for the bene- 
fit of the public, such as those of the Pfauen-Insel at Potsdam, the 
park at Portici, or our own Tower menagerie. At Parisalone, at 
the Jardin des Plantes, in the flourishing days of the Jussieus and 
Cuviers, was the living zoological coilection rendered essen- 
tially subservient to the purposes of science. Since then, how- 
even, matters have much changed : the Jardin des Plantes, which 
so long reigned supreme, has, by remaining stationary, sunk 
into a second rank. She may indeed be as justly as ever proud 
of her Milne-Edwards, her Brongniart, her Decaisne, and many 
others, but long out of favour with the Government and the pay- 
ing public, who transferred their patronage to the high-sounding 
Jardin @’Acclimatation, now no more, she has been almost aban- 
doned to the resources of pure science, always of the most 
restricted in a pecuniary point of view. We in the mean time, 
and after our example several continental states or cities, have 
made great advances. ‘The formation of our Zoological Society 
and Gardens opened a new era in the cultivation of the science. 
After various vicissitudes, the Society had the good fortune to 
secure the services of one who combined in the highest degree 
zoological eminence with administrative ability, and thus our great 
living zoological collection is now raised to the proud relative 
position which the Jardin des Plantes once held, and which there 
seems every reason to hope it will long maintain. With an an- 
nual income of about 23,c00/. the Zoological Society is enabled 
to maintain a living collection of about a thousand species of 
Vertebrata, and although some portion of the surplus funds is 
necessarily applied for the sole gratification of the paying public, 
yet a fair share is devoted to the real promotion of that science for 
which all the fellows are supposed to subscribe, the accurate ob- 
servation of the animals maintained, the dissection of those that 
die, and the publication of the results. Physiological experiments 
are either actually made in the garden, or promoted and liberally 
assisted, such, for instance, as those on the transfusion of blood, 
the effects or non-effects of which were recently laid before the 
Royal Society by Mr. F. Galton. A very rich zoological library 
has been formed, and last year’s accounts show a sum of about 
1,800/. expended in the Society's scientific publications. 
Zoological gardens, after the example of the London one, 
haye been established not only in several of our provincial towns, 
but in various continental cities, amongst which the more im- 
portant ones, as I am informed, are those of Amsterdam, Ant- 
werp, Hamburgh, Cologne, Frankfort, Berlin, Rotterdam, and 
Dresden ; the receipts of the one at Hamburgh, for instance, 
amounting annually, according to the published reports, to between 
8,000/, and 9,000/, There are also so-called gardens of acclima- 
tisation ; but these have not much of a scientific character ; their 
professed object indeed is not so much the observation of the 
physiology and constitution of animals as their modification for 
practical purposes, and practically they are chiefly known as 
places of recreation, and are not always very successful. The 
great one in the Bois de Boulogne, now destroyed, out of an 
expenditure in 1868 of about 7,200/. showed a deficit of about 
I,600/. ; a smaller one at the Hague is enabled to pay an annual 
dividend to its shareholders. 
Living collections of plants have great advantages over those 
of animals, they can be so much more extensively maintained at 
a comparatively small cost. In several botanical gardens several 
thousand species have been readily cultivated at a comparatively 
small cost, and species can be represented by a considerable 
number of individuals, a great gain especially where instruction 
is the immediate object, the lives of many can be watched 
through several successive generations, and great facilities are 
afforded for physiological experiments and microscopical obser- 
vations on plants and their organs whilst still retainmg more or 
less of life. On the other hand the false data recorded from obser- 
vations made in botanical gardens have been lamentably numerous 
and important. A plant in the course of its life so alters its outer 
aspect that each one cannot be individualised by the keeper of a 
large collection, and at one period, that of the seed in the ground, 
it is wholly withdrawn from his observation. He is therefore 

obliged to trust to labels, these are often mismatched by accident 
or by the carelessness of the workmen employed, or again, one 
seed has been sown and another has come up in its place, or a 
perennial has perished and made room for a sucker or seedling 
from an adjoining species. The misnomers arising from these 
and other causes have become perpetuated and sanctioned by 
directors who, for want of adequate libraries or herbaria, or 
sometimes for want of experience or ability, have been unable to 
detect them. Plants have also been so disguised or essentially 
altered by cultivation that it has become difficult to recognise 
their identity, and new varieties or hybrids, which, if left to them- 
selves, would have succumbed to some of the innumerable causes 
of destruction they are constantly exposed to ina wild state, have 
been preserved and propagated through the protective care of the 
cultivator, and pronounced at once to be new species. If, more- 
over, a misplaced label indicates that the seed has been received 
from a country where no plants of a similar type are known to 
grow, the director readily notes it as a new genus, and, proud of 
the discovery, gives it a name and appends a so-called diagnosis 
to his next seed-catalogue, adding one more to the numerous 
puzzles with which the science is encumbered. So far, indeed, 
had this nuisance been camied in several Continental gardens 
in the earlier portion of the present century, that, excepting per- 
haps Fischer and Meyer’s and a few other first-rate indexes, the 
great majority, perhaps nine-tenths, of the new species published 
in these catalogues have proved untenable, and, from my own 
experience, I am now obliged, a griori, to set down as doubtful 
every species established on a garden plant without confirmation 
from wild specimens. Fortunately the custom is now abating, 
and directors of botanic gardens are beginning to perceive that 
they do not add to their reputation by having their names 
appended to those of bad species. 
Living collections of plants, or botanical gardens, are of much 
older date than zoological ones, and since the sixteenth century 
have been attached to the principal universities which have 
medical schools, that of Padua, dating from 1525, that of Pisa, 
from 1544, and of Montpellier, from 1597. The Jardin des 
Plantes of Paris, which in botany, even more than in zoology, 
so long reigned supreme, was established in 1610, our own first 
one at Oxford in 1632. These university gardens having been 
generally more or less under the control of eminent resident 
botanists, have contributed very largely to the means of studying 
the structure and affinities of plants, especially in those Conti- 
nental cities where a milder or more steady climate has facilitated 
the maintenance of large collections in the open air or with little 
protection. Continental gardens have also been long and are 
still made largely available for the purpose of instruction as well 
as fof scientific experiments, of which the recent labours of 
Naudin and Decaisne are an excellent illustration. For these 
scientific purposes the arrangement in large and small square 
compartments is peculiarly suitable, and I confess that I have 
frequently had greater pleasure in witnessing the facilities afforded 
to zealous students in following up, book in hand, the straight 
rows of scientifically-arranged plants in these formal university 
gardens, than in watching the gay crowds that flock to the more 
ornamentally laid out public botanic gardens. 
I do not think that generally much advance has been made of 
late years in Continental botanical gardens. Those that I first 
visited in 1830 appeared to me to be but little improved when I 
again went over them in 1869. Some have acquired additional 
space, others have paid more attention to ornament, but most 
have remained nearly stationary, and a few have even fallen back. 
In our own country we have mnde great progress. Kew Gardens 
had indeed, in former days, rendered assistance to the investi- 
gations of Robert Brown and a few other favoured individuals, 
but they were the Sovereign’s private property, and were kept 
very close, with little encouragement to science at large. But 
thirty years’ unceasing exertions on the part of its distinguished 
directors, the two Hookers, father and son, have raised them to 
a point of scientific usefulness far beyond any other establishment 
of the kind at home or abroad. Of the large sums annually 
voted for it by Parliament, a portion has indeed to be applied to 
mere ornament and to the gratification of visitors, but yet, with 
all the drawbacks of our climate and consequent expenditure in 
houses, the largest named collection of species ever brought 
together in one spot, representatives of all parts of the globe, 
are there maintained, freely exhibited to the public, and 
submitted to the examination of scientific botanists. 
(Zo be cont inued) 
