Chap. VII.] THE BOIS DB VINCENNES. 109 



This plan might be continued, if we have no higher object than to 

 procure specimens to illustrate the scientific names that men have 

 given plants. But if our aim be to show the inexhaustible beauty 

 and dignity of the vegetable kingdom, we must disentangle our- 

 selves from such limitations. And, clearly, the way to do this 

 is to treat each city's series of gardens (both botanic gardens and 

 parks) as a whole, developing in each some distinguishing feature 

 — from the smallest square with a complete collection of Ivies or 

 Hawthorns, to the noblest park adorned with the trees of a 

 hundred hills. 



Finally, though the subject suggests other points of interest, 

 let it be considered what a noble school of instruction the parks 

 of Paris or London, New York, or any other great city, might in 

 this way become. The whole would thus be made a great 

 experimental garden, in which every question in connection with 

 arboriculture might be thoroughly tested. In every direction 

 distinct types of vegetation would be met with, instead of the 

 " universal mixture " now everywhere seen, and which so soon and 

 so thoroughly trains the eye to take no more notice of trees or 

 plants than of the railing-spikes round a square. The contents of 

 no botanic garden now in existence would be worthy of mention 

 compared with the good results we could obtain in this way. It 

 is not, like many of the changes we long for in towns, impossible 

 to carry out from want of means. The adoption of it would at once 

 tend to make the expenditure of every shilling in our public 

 gardens go toward definite and precious results, and by it we 

 should soon have national gardens worthier of the name than any 

 hitherto in existence. 



Near Lac des Minimes, shffwitrg bad effect of Road and Walk parallel ivith Mar^?t. 



