218 Natural History of Plants. 



galling, than that, after a great deal of trouble and expense 

 in draining, reclaiming, and planting a tract of bottom land 

 with what was conceived to be the Populus monilifera, the 

 ground should, through the shifting of names which has lately 

 taken place and is daily going on in your far-famed city, be 

 found, in the course of a few years, covered with the stiff and 

 worthless Lombardy poplar. Yours, &c. 



: James Fraser. 



Dart/eld, April}, 1828. 



Art. XI. On the Natural History of Plants. By B. 



Sir, 

 When we consider the ardour with which ornamental 

 gardening and botany have long been cultivated in this 

 country, and the vast sums expended in these favourite pur- 

 suits, as objects of commerce or of elegant luxury, it is sur- 

 prising that so little should be known of the natural history 

 of the vegetable world. Though some mention is usually 

 made of the native country and local habitation of the plants 

 figured in the beautiful works published by Mr. Curtis and 

 his successors, these notices are, for the most part, so scanty 

 and imperfect, that they convey no adequate idea of the effect 

 produced by the subjects of them in the great system of 

 nature ; and in some cases, from the circumstance of only a 

 small portion of a flowery branch being delineated, a totally 

 erroneous idea is given of the plant itself. jRhododendron 

 caucasium. No. 1145. of the Bot. Mag., occurs to me as an 

 instance. In Messrs. Loddiges' elegant little work, a mi- 

 niature outline of the whole plant is often given; and is, 

 indeed, absolutely necessary to convey a correct idea of it to 

 those who have never seen the originals. Some ridiculous 

 disappointments have occasionally happened to amateurs, from 

 thus mistaking the flowery branch of a forest tree for the full- 

 length portrait of a shrub. Instead of something manageable, 

 like a myrtle or geranium, they have received a plant which 

 has astonished them, by a growth as rapid and gigantic as that 

 of the grain of mustard in Scripture ; and which, after having 

 filled their houses, and tormented them year after year, has, 

 after all, never found room enough to produce its blossoms. 

 But it is not as a matter of mere amusement, but of interest- 

 ing knowledge, that the deficiency alluded to is to be regretted. 

 What adequate idea could a native of the tropics form of 

 the effect of the hawthorn in our vernal landscape, were it 



