286 
ever peculiarly attached himself. Inm fine, 
the Herbarium, including the result of his 
researches inthe Isles of Java, of Bourbon, 
and the Mauritius, with the Cape of Good 
Hope and St. Helena, contains five thou- 
sand four hundred different kinds, of which 
from a thousand to twelve hundred at least 
may be reckoned as new. To each speci- 
men are appended the names which the 
plant receives in the different countries 
where it grows, with notes on its height, 
appearance, the colour of its flowers, and 
frequently the structure of its fruit, includ- 
ing those characters which are apt to dis- 
knowledge of the useful or noxious quali- 
ties of the particular vegetable, or the su- 
perstitious ideas attached to it, have been 
carefully collected by this Botanist. 
M. Bela anger reserves for himself the 
publication of this department, with the 
exception of some families, which he has 
confided for examination and analysis to 
M. Guillemin, Member of the Society of 
Natural History. 
The new species, alone, will be described 
-in detail, while complete enumerations, in 
the form of a catalogue of the different 
kinds gathered in each country, will convey 
an idea of their respective Floras, and 
afford materials for a general sketch of the 
Botanical Geography of Asia, which M. 
Belanger means to prefix to the second 
part of the scientific publication; he will 
also append an Essay on the officinal plants 
of India and Pegu. 
M. Belanger’s travels will be highly in- 
teresting, as communicating information 
upon the manners, customs, and institu- 
' tions of the people who inhabit the various 
regions of the vast Indian Empire. Few 
individuals have traversed such a vast ex- 
tent of country, and visited more varied 
end highly Mire districts; and fewer 
still, it must be ssed, have been placed 
- circumstances which admitted of their 
riving -50 much advantage from their 
igicdu beds depot the Ba eet 
BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
riches of Hindostan, M. Belanger started 
from Paris in 1825, accompanying the 
Viscount Desbassayns de Richemont, Ad- 
ministrator general of the French settle- 
ments in India, who was to proceed over 
land to his destination, and who was en- 
trusted with a mission to the court of Per- 
sia. This expedition, which had not, so 
far as we are aware, been undertaken by 
any French traveller during several centu- 
ries, may be considered as forming an 
epoch in the history of the present, and 
becomes the more interesting, as the offi- 
cial situation of M. Desbassayns has placed 
it in M. Belanger's power to record a 
number of curious facts, which no other 
circumstances could have enabled him to 
collect. 
Our travellers, after quitting France, 
crossed Germany, Poland, and the south 
of Russia, as far as the river Don; thence 
they traversed a part of Circassia and the 
highest chain of the Caucasus, and de- 
scended in the beginning of April, into 
Georgia. It is impossible even to glance 
here at all the fatigue and danger which 
they endured upon the snow ; their adven- 
tures on the frozen sea of Azof are parti- 
cularly striking ; in short, this, the best 
known part of their whole route, has still 
afforded M. Belanger an opportunity to 
make so many striking and novel remarks, | 
that this portion of the narrative will per- 
haps be read with the most interest of all. 
After a short stay at Tifliz, during which 
many valuable documents were compiled 
on the political and commercial state of 
Georgia, they resumed their route, on the 
15th of April, and reached the Persian 
frontier on the 20th. From North to South 
they traversed all the western part of this 
vast country, successively visiting Erivan, 
Tauris, Teheran, Ispahan, and Bushir, and 
in each of these cities, M. p noted 
— 
ences between the several orm 
aspect, manners, customs, and situation 
their respective tribes, and all the d 
