Garden Botany. 57 



in 1823, enumerates about 12,000 species; to which it is 

 probable that at least 5000 may be added, if the obscure 

 tribes of plants which are not admitted into that useful work, 

 and those which have been introduced since 1823, be taken 

 into account. The number of plants, new to the gardens, 

 which were seen in England for the first time in 1824, could 

 not have been much less than 1000. 



An admiration of the beauties of the vegetable kingdom has 

 diffused itself through all ranks of society, and has be- 

 come the favourite recreation of the merchant, of the private 

 gentleman, and of the man of letters. To administer to such 

 laudable pursuits, and to render the votaries of fashion the 

 willing instruments of promoting the progress of science, was 

 the original intention of such works as are at the head of this 

 article. If some of those which are of recent existence, can- 

 not be said to have kept the latter object so much in view as 

 the former, let us do justice to those which have never suf- 

 fered themselves to lose sight of the interests of science for 

 the sake of administering to a morbid disposition among the 

 public to the contrary. 



The number of periodical publications to which the prevail- 

 ing taste for garden botany has given rise is very considerable. 

 In France the Choix des Plantes^ the Jardin de la Malmaiso?i, 

 and the Jardin de Cels of Ventenat, and Liliacees and Roses of 

 Kedoute, are excellent works of this description. To the 

 same class in Germany may be referred the splendid public- 

 ations of Jacquin. But it is in England that such works have 

 flourished beyond any example in foreign countries. By judi- 

 ciously adapting the cost and the size of their books to the 

 means and wishes of the public, and by laying them before 

 their purchasers in an unexpensive form, with a perpetual 

 recurrence at certain definite periods, a circulation has been 

 created for expensive works on the plants of our gardens 

 which never could have been obtained, if the necessary con- 

 veniences we have noticed had not been supplied. Indeed 

 the only instances in which similar works have not met with 

 adequate support, have either been when the publication, 

 from its price, was beyond the reach of the great mass of the 

 public, or from the irregularity of its appearance gave no 

 reasonable hope of a long continuance. 



The utility of periodical publications connected with the 

 objects of science, cannot be placed in a stronger light than 

 by the forcible observations of one of the most distinguished 

 of their editors. " A moderate priced periodical publica- 

 tion," says this writer, " with figures of the objects of that 

 department of the history of nature to which it happens to be 



