3196 Proposal for a Glazed Garden 



of London is attended with great danger, and the danger, if not 

 positively so frequent as is supposed, is still a sore trial, even in 

 anticipation. It is but lately an infuriated bullock threw an elderly 

 female into a two-pair window ; the shaft of a furiously-driven cab 

 has passed through the body of a man ; the brains of a child have 

 been scattered about the street by the wheels of an omnibus. Such 

 cases as these may be rare, but broken arms and legs, from falls 

 occasioned by compulsory contact with horses and carriages, are 

 innumerable ; and let it not be supposed the victims are the only suf- 

 ferers : thousands of timid people have fled in terror from racing 

 omnibuses and goaded cows, and although their bodies may have 

 escaped scatheless, their minds have suffered a deep and lasting 

 injury. From a glazed garden all such perils and thoughts of perils 

 are absent. 



4th. Instruction. — Such a garden might be made the means of 

 complete instruction in botany. Is it not a part of every medical 

 education that the pupil shall possess a competent knowledge of 

 structural and systematic botany ? In order to perfect him in the 

 study, he is now taken to Kew, to Chelsea, to Regent's Park, or he is 

 whisked by some railway far into the country, on the remote chance 

 of finding the specimens in their native habitats, causing a loss of 

 time, labour, and money that has been considered a great grievance 

 to many young men with whom I have conversed. Here the informa- 

 tion would be brought to him, not he to the information. Here would 

 be a lecture-room among the objects themselves, — a lecture-room 

 open to every professor or lecturer, on the sole condition that 

 all within the walls at the moment should be at liberty to attend. 

 Here the student of British botany should find living specimens of 

 all our native plants; should have every facility allowed him to exa- 

 mine, dissect, and compare them. Here a committee should be 

 formed, with the duty of alternately attending to give instructions to 

 every inquirer; of pointing out the plants whose various parts serve 

 as articles of food, clothing, or medicine ; of exhibiting them in a 

 manufactured as well as growing state ; and of explaining by what pro- 

 cess they are prepared for use. And not only should this committee- 

 exercise its function of tuition : every botanist, known to be such, as 

 the subscriber to a society, or the contributor to a journal, or the cu- 

 rator of a garden, or the holder of any title whatever to the office of 

 teacher, should be always at liberty to illustrate his views by the living 

 objects before him. A knowledge of ethnology and geography could 

 also be acquired. 



