238 Botanic Garden of Madrid. 



about a mile from the garden, and from two draw-wells 

 situated at its western extremity. Each division is subdi- 

 vided by walks a foot and a half broad into two hundred 

 and eighty beds, two feet square, and half a foot deep, in 

 each of which only one species of plant is cultivated. These 

 divisions are enclosed by fences formed of common rose-trees 

 (rosa gallica, Lin.); and between these and the beds there is a 

 broad walk, with a border about three feet wide, in which 

 different ornamental plants, most of them liliaceous, are sym- 

 metricallyarrangedatequaldistances,in masses. There is exter- 

 nally, between the said fences of rose-trees and the walks of the 

 garden, a border or platband about four feet broad, bounded on 

 the outside by an edge of myrtle or box, about ten inches high, 

 where large umbrageous trees, generally exotics, are planted, 

 about eighteen feet distant from each other, the shade of which 

 preserves in summer the plants of the school from the exces- 

 sive heat of the sun, and without which they would inevitably 

 perish. The spaces left between tree and tree are occupied 

 by shrubs or dwarf-trees, which may be pruned ; as the 

 yew-tree, Viburnum tinus, Prunus laurocerasus, Rosmarinus 

 officinalis, Ruscus aculeatus, &c. ; or by those naturally of 

 a fine shape, as the Robinia hispida and umbraculifera, 

 Medicago arborea, Cytisus austriacus and laburnum, Spartium 

 junceum, &c. ; and by various herbaceous plants of orna- 

 ment, such as iris, wall-flowers, columbines, different kinds of 

 candy-tuft or rock-cress, dahlias, paeon ies, common day-lily, 

 and yellow day-lily, ranunculus, anemones, upright larkspurs, 

 a great many varieties of common gillyflowers, speedwells, 

 primroses, sun-flowers, star-worts, wild marygolds, and various 

 others. The trunks of some robust trees are clothed with 

 creeping shrubs, as ivy, virgin's bower, virginian silk-tree, 

 trumpet-flower, Coccoloba sagittifolia, which flowers and 

 fruits there in the open air; two kinds of sarsaparilla, 

 Menispermum canadense, and some others. The divisions of 

 the two plots appropriated to perennial and biennial plants 

 of the practical school are divided into twelve parts, each con- 

 taining twenty-four beds, disposed as we have already men- 

 tioned, and may hold about eight thousand species, a number 

 which will not easily be collected there, considering the climate 

 of Madrid, which is excessively cold in winter, and very hot 

 in summer. It was projected that each bed should have an 

 iron ticket, with the number of the bed, and the systematic 

 name of the plant it contained, in Spanish; but this plan could 

 not be carried into execution, owing principally to the want of 

 funds. Consequently we were obliged to confine our tickets 



