388 Notes and Reflections during u Tour : — 



The Uses of all the different departments of this garden 

 were explained to us, while walking through them with M, 

 Thouin himself, in 1815: the whole was then in excellent 

 order. In 1819 we again had the pleasure of walking through 

 a part of the garden with the venerable professor, then very 

 infirm ; but he pointed out to us the culture of the sweet 

 potato, gave us some seeds of a new wood-strawberry, and 

 some letters of introduction for Italy. In comparing the gar- 

 den in 1828 with what it was at these periods, we think it has 

 lost rather than gained : several of the examples of operations 

 were wanting, or out of repair ; a good many blanks were left 

 in the systematic arrangement ; and, what displeased us most 

 of all, the compartment of soils and manures, in which also 

 the labours of digging, picking, trenching, hoeing, raking, 

 &c, were practically taught to the students, was without a 

 single example of a heap of dung, compost, or soil. We were 

 told that these had been removed, partly because there was 

 not enough of money allowed to keep up the garden, and 

 partly because, being in the neighbourhood of the menage* 

 ries, these heaps of earth and dung were considered unsightly 

 —a false taste, in our opinion. We hope they will be restored ; 

 because, if the art of culture is to be taught at all, it ought to 

 be taught completely in all its parts. The different hot- 

 houses are in a state of neglect and decay, and the plants 

 by no means worthy of comparison with those of the most 

 indifferent British stove or green-house. The French gar- 

 deners, in general, have had too little experience in house 

 culture to be able to compete with us in this department ; and 

 they have, besides, very indifferent houses, both in point of 

 form and means of heating and ventilating. The nursery 

 gardeners, and the growers of flowers and forced vegetables, 

 equal if they do not excel us ; because they have adopted the 

 low Dutch pits, and houses with roofs entirely of glass. An 

 English gardener, at first sight of the interior of the hot-houses 

 in the Jardin des Plantes, and other similar hot-houses on the 

 Continent, would say that the air was not kept sufficiently 

 moist, because, if it were so, the plants would be more abun- 

 dantly furnished with healthy foliage ; but as all these houses 

 have opaque roofs, and only glass in front, a little reflection 

 will convince him, that to keep plants so circumstanced in a 

 growing state through a long winter, would greatly disfigure 

 them in point of shape, while, from deficiency of light, they 

 would never form flower-buds. The Continental gardener, 

 therefore, grows his plants in the summer season, and for 

 the most part out of doors, in an open but sheltered situation, 

 and only preserves them through the winter. . ., 



