. Jar din des Plant is. 387 



all the plants of field culture ; another all the medicinal 

 plants ; another all the principal timber trees ; another, as far 

 as practicable, all the fruit trees. : Specimens of the different 

 implements are kept in one building, and of the principal 

 soils, manures, and composts in an appropriate enclosure ; and 

 so on. The essence of the lectures, accompanied by figures 

 of such of the implements and operations as admit of repre- 

 sentation by lines, will be found in Tkouin's Courts de Culture 

 et de Naturalisation des Vegetaux^ by Oscar Leclerc, 3 vols. 

 8vo, with one quarto volume of plates ; and a complete de- 

 scription of the garden is given in the well known work of 

 Royer. 



We have no public garden in Britain which makes any pre- 

 tension to so many objects, and therefore we cannot estimate 

 the merits of the Paris garden by a specific comparison. Kew 

 has no more relation to it than the botanic garden of any pri- 

 vate gentleman or university. But we may estimate the general 

 merits of the Paris garden, as an institution, with reference to 

 institutions of the same class in this country ; and, in this view, 

 its comparative comprehensiveness and utility at once claim 

 for it a decided preference. The greatest national establish- 

 ments of this kind in Europe, next to that in Paris, we sup- 

 pose to be those of Berlin ; but, as the gardening institution 

 there is a public association, apart from the public botanic 

 garden, a specific comparison cannot be made. At Florence 

 there are a professorship of culture, and a garden of examples 

 of operations and plants ; but the latter is very limited and 

 imperfect. At Madrid, as we have seen (see La Gasca, in 

 Vols. I. II. III.), there was once an attempt at such a garden, 

 but it was never rendered effective. In various parts of Ger- 

 many and Italy there are professorships of. culture, and in 

 most of the botanic gardens there are departments for agri- 

 cultural and horticultural plants ; but we do not recollect 

 one, in which all the operations on the soil and on living 

 plants are illustrated by practical examples. 



The inventor of this description of garden, as far as we 

 have been able to learn, was the late Professor Andrew 

 Thouin (see Biog., Vol. I. p. 226.), perhaps the most scientific 

 practical gardener that has ever yet appeared : for physio* 

 logical and chemical knowledge, we know of none in this 

 country, either practical men or amateurs, who can be at all 

 compared with him. In France the only man fit to succeed 

 him was his nephew, Oscar Leclerc ; but, as the situation is 

 considered a kind of sinecure for veteran academicians, it was 

 given first to M. Bosc, and on his death to M. Mirbel, both 

 men of the greatest merit, and the former a cultivator, 



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