April, 1848. HORTICULTURAL GARDENS. 93 



The seeds were all deposited in bottles, and hung round 

 the walls of a large airy apartment ; and for cleanliness and 

 excellence of kind they would bear comparison with the 

 best seedsman's collection in London. Of English garden 

 vegetables, and varieties of the Indian Cerealia, and legu- 

 minous plants, Indian corn, millets, rice, &c, the collections 

 for distribution were extensive. 



The manufacture of economic products is not neglected. 

 Excellent coffee is grown ; and arrow-root, equal to the best 

 West Indian, is prepared, at Is. 6d. per bottle of twenty- 

 four ounces, — about a fourth of the price of that article in 

 Calcutta. 



In most respects the establishment is a model of what 

 such institutions ought to be in India; not only of real 

 practical value, in affording a good and cheap supply of the 

 best culinary and other vegetables that the climate can pro- 

 duce, but as showing to what departments efforts are 

 best directed. Such gardens diffuse a taste for the most 

 healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for 

 the many unoccupied hours which the Englishman in 

 India finds upon his hands. They are also schools of 

 gardening ; and a simple inspection of what has been done 

 at Bhagulpore is a valuable lesson to any person about to 

 establish a private garden of his own. 



I often heard complaints made of the seeds distributed 

 from these gardens not vegetating freely in other parts of 

 India, and it is not to be expected that they should retain 

 their vitality unimpaired through an Indian rainy season ; 

 but on the other hand I almost invariably found that the 

 planting and tending had been left to the uncontrolled 

 management of native gardeners, who with a certain 

 amount of skill in handicraft are, from habits and preju- 

 dices, singularly unfit for the superintendence of a garden. 



