Garden Botany. 40 



them, by the multitude of new species and genera, with which 

 the publications of Jussieu, of Lamarck, and his successors, of 

 Desfontaines, and more recently of Decandolle, are replete. Of 

 private means applied to the prosecution of investigations in 

 natural history, the expedition of Humboldt to South America 

 is a splendid example. The various scientific publications in 

 illustration of its results, are a noble monument of the zeal, 

 and knowledge, and well applied resources of the most illus- 

 trious traveller now existing. The public gardens of France 

 are numerous ; but, with the exception of Paris and Mont- 

 pellier, have not much celebrity. They are generally ill 

 managed and inadequately supported. That of Montpellier, 

 which has successively been under the direction of Magnol, 

 Gouan, Decandolle, and Delile, all botanists celebrated in 

 their day, has acquired a high degree of reputation ; the Jar- 

 din des Plantes at Paris is also an establishment of great cele- 

 brity, and numbers of the rarest plants have been reared with- 

 in its walls : but as a botanic garden, it is inferior to some of 

 other countries of Europe. 



The private gardens in France, in which botanical objects 

 occupy a principal place, are many. They all, however, be- 

 long to nurserymen, or private gentlemen, who traffic in the 

 produce of their gardens in order to maintain them. That of 

 Cels, at Paris, is celebrated by the labours of Ventenat ; Noi- 

 sette, another Paris nurseryman, possesses a large collection 

 of botanical rarities ; and among the amateurs, the establish- 

 ments of Parmentier at Enghien, of Soulange-Boudin at Fro- 

 mont, and of Boursault at Paris, deserve honourable mention. 

 Some efforts have lately been made to establish an horticul- 

 tural society at Paris, but we know not with what success. 



Botany in Spam, like all the other liberal sciences, may be 

 said to have at present no existence in that unhappy country; 

 its professors are banished, its gardens desolate, and all that 

 mighty support, which was once bestowed upon them, with- 

 held, as much, perhaps, from the ignorant recklessness of the 

 reigning sovereign as from the exhausted state of his treasury. 

 But the time has been when Spain was the most powerful 

 patroness botany ever experienced ; as the numberless scientific 

 expeditions, undertaken by that country at enormous cost, and 

 its splendid public gardens abundantly testify. The former 

 have ever been unparalleled for the unlimited resources with 

 which they have been prosecuted. Not to mention the fruit- 

 less expedition of Hernandez to Mexico, in the reign of 

 Philip II., which is said to have cost the large sum, for the 

 time, of 50,000 crowns ; the reign of Charles III. was, beyond 



Vol. I. No. 1. e 



