AN AMERICAN KEW. 259 



field, and to spare no pains to maintain the first place. Indeed, as 

 old New-Yorkers will remember, Manhattan Island has already had 

 a botanical plantation ; thougb, owing to certain causes, it has disap- 

 peared and left no trace. It was when the present century was hardly 

 more than a score of years old that one Dr. Hosack marked out a gar- 

 den on the land now comprised between Forty-Sixth and Fifty-Sixth 

 Streets and Sixth Avenue and-East Kiver. For several years the good 

 doctor pegged away at his admirable hobby, and really achieved excel- 

 lent results, although the popular mind was as yet scarcely educated 

 to understand what he would be at. When, at length, he cleparted to 

 that Paradise where botany and botanists have their apotheosis, he 

 bequeathed his garden to Columbia College, on certain conditions. 

 They were to be allowed to erect their new projected college buildings 

 in a corner of the garden, and, in return for this grant, were to see to 

 it that the plantations were kept in good order, and augmentecl as op- 

 portunity offered. I blush to say that the college, after taking advan- 

 tage of the doctor's land, neglected to carry out his stipulation : they 

 suffered the garden to fall to rack and ruin, until it became nothing 

 but an unsightly wilderness ; and then the real-estate cormorants came, 

 and we see the result. 



Nevertheless, the evil that men do, or the good that they leave un- 

 done, is sooner or later transmuted into somewhat conducive to the 

 general welfare. Dr. Hosack's garden could hardly have been per- 

 mitted to occupy its broad acres down to the present date; and per- 

 haps it is better that it should expire in its infancy, instead of under- 

 going annihilation in the beauty of its maturity. Manhattan Island 

 has no room for such an institution now. But there is in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of the city, and under the jurisdiction of the Park 

 Commissioners, a range of ground peculiarly fitted to be the site ot an 

 American Kew ; and the Commissioners aforesaid have expressed their 

 willingness to make a free gift of it to New-Yorkers, provided the 

 latter, during the current year, show a disposition to give the where- 

 withal to render a Botanical Garden practicable. 



Here is an opportunity evidently vouchsafed by Providence in the 

 nick of time. The tract in question is none other than the Bronx 

 Park, a delectable region, within four miles of Harlem (two miles 

 nearer us than Kew to London), having protecting timber, fertile 

 soil, low and high land, and traversed by the Bronx Kiver, which 

 furnishes in abundance all the water that can be needed. 



It is by no means an unredeemed wilderness : much of it has been 

 occupied from early times by wealthy residents, and the labor required 

 to bring it into a suitable condition is thereby greatly diminished. 

 In natural beauty it is unequalled in our neighborhood : it is more 

 spacious than Kew, and surpasses it in all native qualities of soil and 

 topography. The pecuniary value of this concession to the city, apart 

 from other considerations, is not less than one million dollars : a more 

 tempting offer has never been made to patriotic science, and, if it be 

 not accepted on the spot, can never be expected hereafter. All that 

 the wealthy citizens of New York have to do, in-order to make an 

 American Kew a certainty and bestow undying credit on their own 



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